PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — The Mets opened spring training intending to use a six-man rotation for most if not all of the season.
Now, they’ll be fortunate to make it to Opening Day with six viable major-league starters.
They lost Sean Manaea to a right oblique strain, manager Carlos Mendoza announced Monday. He will be shut down for a couple of weeks and in a best-case scenario will return to the active roster in mid- or late April.
Manaea joins Frankie Montas, his fellow offseason signing, as starters who have suffered injuries in the first two weeks of camp. Montas suffered a right lat strain and is out until at least mid-May.
“It’s very, very disappointing. I hate being injured, not out there pitching, doing my job,” said Manaea, who after starring last year returned to the Mets on a three-year, $75 million contract. “I’m going to do everything I can to get there as healthy and as quick as possible. It still doesn’t mask how disappointed I am in myself. I thought I was doing what I could this offseason to train and it just kind of popped up.”
Mendoza said: “You hate to see it, especially before we get to March, two of your guys going down. But we’ve been talking about our depth, and here we are getting tested.”
The Mets’ season-opening rotation — likely to be of the traditional five-man variety, especially with several early off days built into the schedule — is set to feature Kodai Senga, David Peterson and Clay Holmes.
That leaves the trio of Griffin Canning, Paul Blackburn and Tylor Megill competing for two spots. Megill is at a disadvantage because he can be optioned to the minors; Canning and Blackburn cannot.
Because Manaea’s absence is expected to be short-term, the Mets don’t plan to add another starter to account for it.
“We feel good with our depth,” Mendoza said. “We feel good with the options that we have in camp. We’ll see what happens.”
The next layer of depth is righthander Justin Hagenman and lefthander Brandon Waddell.
They serve as a buffer ahead of prospects Brandon Sproat, Blade Tidwell and Dom Hamel. The Mets want to provide those pitchers — all of whom struggled with Triple-A Syracuse last season — extra time to develop before calling on them in the majors.
Manaea said his oblique began to bother him “pretty much at the very beginning of camp.” He worked through it, even facing hitters during a two-inning live batting practice session Thursday, but the soreness remained.
“We feel good with our depth. We feel good with the options that we have in camp. We’ll see what happens,” Mendoza said. “He didn’t think much of it. He kept throwing. ‘I’m fine, I’m fine.’ He threw a live BP. But it got to a point where that’s not going away.”
The Mets decided Sunday to have Manaea get an MRI, which revealed the strain.
“Nothing ever really got any better,” Manaea said. “It didn’t get worse. It just kind of plateaued. The worst part was it didn’t get better over the last couple of weeks.”
Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
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