Mets spring training update: Jeff McNeil health, Sean Manaea dud, Brett Baty homers

The New York Mets have cooled off after a week of winning. Freak out time? Hardly. When Hunter Parsons is regularly pitching, the team is clearly not aiming for a victory.

Maybe worth a little bit of concern is the bicep injury keeping Jeff McNeil out of game action. Caused by swinging in the cages, the level of worry hasn’t reached the point where they’ve felt the need to give him an MRI just yet.

Now only three and a half weeks away from Opening Day, any new injuries carry a little more weight in terms of whether or not a player will miss any time. Spring training works a little differently. For all we can tell, this is the kind of injury McNeil might even play through in the regular season. We’ll have to wait until Tuesday to find out more. Let’s just hope this wasn’t something actually caused by McNeil showing off during the team’s recent mini-golf outing. That’d be so Mets.

Sean Manaea made a bad first impression with the Mets

A day after Luis Severino looked good throwing heat, Sean Manaea took the mound for his Mets debut. He failed to get out of the third inning.

Did Manaea cry about it after or challenge a hitter like Gerrit Cole might? No. He looked at this from a reasonable perspective.

What were some of those positives? Manaea apparently felt good and got to use his full arsenal of pitches.

Brett Baty hit his first home run of the spring

It’s a non-competition at third base this year with Brett Baty not having any serious competition for playing time. Now 2 for 13 with 5 strikeouts this spring, his big blast accounted for the lone Mets run of the day on Saturday. 

One of his biggest supporters is teammate Francisco Alvarez who took to Instagram after to make a bold declaration about what the lefty has in store for 2024.

Baty’s big spring last year had fans immediately clamoring for him to make the Opening Day roster. Going 13 for 40 will do that. However, those 13 hits did only include 1 home run so he has already matched the total. It can’t be overstated how important of a year this is for the kid after a difficult 2023 season which included a demotion mid-year. 

A rocket off his bat late in a March 2 spring training game won’t be the catalyst to get him going. Like with everything that happens in these exhibition games, they should be taken with a grain of salt.