Mets outfielder Michael Conforto confident he’ll be back to full strength in 2018

This Mets season has been filled with disappointment, but few moments hurt more than seeing Michael Conforto go down in the batter’s box

The date was August 24. The Mets were playing an afternoon game, the series finale against the Arizona Diamondbacks, when Michael Conforto swung the bat, missed and ended up dislocating his left shoulder. It was an absolutely terrible sight seeing him down in excruciating pain. We all knew it was a really bad injury.

On Saturday, nearly a month after that awful day and a couple of weeks after his surgery, Conforto spoke to the media about his recovery, and how he’s looking ahead towards next season.

While Conforto sounds confident he’ll be back to his normal self, it’s natural to be hesitant when talking about timelines for recovery. In his case, the Mets should and hopefully will, take their time to make sure they don’t rush him back. It’s true, it would be a shame if he isn’t ready for Opening Day. However, it would be worse if they hurry him back, and he ends up aggravating or re-injuring his left shoulder because of it.

Conforto told the media that as far as he knows, it’s going to take around 6 months for him to be able to be perform baseball activites (basically swinging in his case). He doesn’t have to worry about throwing, thankfully, since he’s right-handed, so the focus will be placed on his swing over everything else.

If we include a couple of weeks of September as part of his recovery, Conforto could be starting to work on his swing around March when Spring Training is in full swing. Again, hopefully he takes his time and no setbacks or delays occur this winter. We’ll keep our fingers crossed.

The fact that he should be making a full recovery doesn’t take away from the disappointing ending to the season that Conforto suffered. Up until that moment he had enjoyed his best offensive season to date. After the disaster that was 2016, the 24-year-old bounced back and hit the cover off the ball for months at a time.

Conforto finished the year batting .273, with an on-base percentage of .384, and a slugging percentage of .555. His 27 home runs were second on the team to Jay Bruce, and his 68 RBI also ranked near the top of the team’s stats before his injury.

Hopefully 2018 will see a repeat of not only that great of a performance, but one that’s even better.