5 recent NY Mets spring training injuries that derailed a player’s season

A spring training injury can linger and cost a player a full year.
New York Mets Workout
New York Mets Workout | Rich Storry/GettyImages
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A punch to the late winter gut, a spring training injury can completely derail a player’s season. Players, pitchers in particular, have a habit of getting hurt in the preseason whether it’s in a game or otherwise. The New York Mets haven’t been able to escape many spring trainings without at least one pitcher on the IL. Often, it derails a player’s entire year. We're hopeful this isn't the case with Sean Manaea and Frankie Montas in 2025.

There have been a couple of times when a player’s injury lingers from the previous year. Fortunately, those instances seem to have worked out much better. Jacob deGrom missing the second half of 2021 and first half of 2022 wasn’t costly. David Peterson’s hip surgery that delayed his 2024 debut might have actually given him the rest to be a more durable starter in his breakout campaign.

Injuries are devastating. Some of the extremes cost a player an entire year. Others just had them playing catch up and they never were able to meet expectations.

1) Kodai Senga

Why not begin with the most recent? Kodai Senga was shut down by the Mets on February 22 with a shoulder injury. Those early spring training injuries often feel like an omen of something worse to come. Injuries outside of actual game action seem to be so much more insidious.

Senga would, of course, make just one regular season appearance. Another injury happened in his lone start versus the Atlanta Braves and we wouldn’t see him again until the NLDS where a home run served up to Kyle Schwarber was our reintroduction.

A nearly completely lost 2024 season put the parking brake on his momentum of a seventh-place Cy Young finish in 2023. Senga goes into 2025 with the pressure to be the same ace-like starter he was for the Mets as a MLB rookie. Health concerns were present at the time of his signing. Just get him through spring training healthy. Senga withdrawal is a symptom many of us don’t even realize we experienced last year because of all of the positive distractions.

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