3 injured NY Mets players we never expected to miss this much

The New York Mets are going through it right now. Despite a red-hot start to the season, the Amazins have cooled off to say the least. They've lost 13 of their last 16, and virtually every facet of the game has betrayed them.

It's hard to pinpoint just one reason for the downturn. Unless your name is Juan Soto, you've likely had a very bad couple of weeks. The pitching has been bad, the offense has struggled, and injuries are also beginning to rear their ugly head.

Bereft of lefty reliever talent, it's not a surprise that AJ Minter's injury stings badly. And it's far from a shock that missing arguably their two best pitchers in Sean Manaea and Kodai Senga is affecting them. But it's gotten so bad in Queens that there are some names on the IL that we never would have thought would hurt, at least not this bad.

1. Griffin Canning - SP, NY Mets

It's a bit recent to make a final prognosis on the magnitude of this one. It was only last Thursday, in a rare recent Mets win against Atlanta, that Canning went down with a ruptured Achilles. He had surgery to repair it on Friday, and that's the last we'll see of Canning for quite some time.

It's not as if the 29-year-old righty is the second coming of Bob Gibson. But the Mets are in no position to scoff at a 3.77 ERA and a 7-3 record. They can use any and every effective arm at their disposal, and he's been one of the more reliable ones. Before the season, Canning was signed to a one-year deal worth $4.25 million, after a pretty bad year with the Angels.

He proceeded to turn into one of the more reliable arms in the Mets' rotation. With no Senga or Manaea, Canning surprisingly became the third-best pitcher the Mets could go to. It was a welcome yet unexpected development, to say the least.

If you told me in February that he would go down for the season come July, I would have said, "Oh... too bad." I certainly wouldn't have said, "That might be a disaster." But that's what a lot of fans are thinking right about now.