While the injury bug continues to bite the Mets, there was some rare good news on that front with the announcement that Michael Conforto will soon activated from the injured list in advance of Tuesday’s game against the Braves.
Conforto has been out with a hamstring strain since May 16 – the same day that Jeff McNeil suffered a similar injury – and there’s no doubt manager Luis Rojas is excited to have his two former All-Stars back in the lineup.
“It'll be great including Michael in the lineup,” Rojas said prior to Tuesday’s game. “Yesterday we saw McNeil hit a rope to center, and we look forward to seeing the same from Michael. He's someone that can contribute to our offense but also to our defense with how good of a right field he can play."
The expectation was that Conforto would be activated and in the lineup on Tuesday, but due to the Syracuse Mets conducting additional testing and contact tracing following a COVID-19 situation, Conforto was not immediately activated. However, Conforto tested negative on Tuesday, and the intention is for him to be activated for Wednesday's game against Atlanta.
Given the precarious nature of hamstring injuries and the current state of the Mets’ roster, Rojas knows they have no choice but to be careful with their outfielder.
“There's a plan,” Rojas said of the Mets’ plan to ease Conforto back into regular action. “We have our performance staff talk to us and Michael laying out what we want to do. Because we don't just want to throw him in there and running into an immediate high workload coming off of a hamstring injury. He's good. He's in great shape. But we don't want to overuse him.”
In addition to making sure he’s not overworked, the dog days of summer are officially here, and that could play a role as well.
“Right now, it's so hot,” Rojas said. “It was so hot in Washington so we want to be cautious with that. We'll monitor how everything is going, how the games are going and what the weather is. We'll see where we can get him a day off in his first week off the injured list.”
The Mets have a day off on Thursday, but are scheduled to play a doubleheader Friday and will play all the way until the All-Star break beginning on July 12, so they’ll need to find some time to give Conforto some rest at some point.