NY Mets injury update: Juan Soto calf, Jorge Polanco decision, Christian Scott debut

The New York Mets have played just over a week of baseball and with it have come new injuries as well as the return of some in the minors who were already ailing. What’s the latest on those walking wounded?

The latest on Mets players playing through injuries

Juan Soto’s calf and what's next

Despite the hit barrage on Friday, Juan Soto wasn’t a participant beyond the first inning. It seems as if the Mets bats decided that without their MVP candidate they’d wake up, finally. Soto appeared to hurt his calf running first to third early in the win over the San Francisco Giants.

He’ll receive imaging on Saturday to determine what’s going on. It’s the second significant lower-half injury the Mets are dealing with, the other which with Soto out for any amount of time might force the team into a decision.

If Juan Soto is going to miss any time at all, Jorge Polanco may need to hit the IL

Jorge Polanco was out of the Mets lineup again on Friday and his loss was only felt when the team saw Juan Soto exit. He’s trying to battle through, but as we saw when the Mets had to replace Soto with Tyrone Taylor, the team is already weakened.

Teams can generally manage with one regular out of the lineup. A four-man bench has enough choices to get them through a couple of games. The Mets will find it difficult to have both Polanco and Soto watching from the sidelines and no additional players brought in. If Polanco’s Achilles isn’t getting any better, it might be time to put him on the IL. Not only is the starting lineup difficult to manage, having only two players available off the bench will make it almost impossible to get through most games.

What’s more, Soto could benefit from some time as a DH.

Christian Scott didn’t have a good Friday

It was appropriate for Christian Scott to make his regular season debut yesterday, but unfortunately he got lit up. He lasted 65 pitches and 3.1 innings. 6 earned runs and another unearned were charged to his stat line.

Working back from Tommy John surgery, the positive is he threw strikes with 46 of them called as such plus zero walks. The negative is he allowed two home runs. Scott is competing with Jonah Tong as one of the first Mets starters to get called up. However, with the big league rotation six-deep with Sean Manaea and able to put Tobias Myers in a position to start as well, it could be a while with performances like these.