Just a couple of days before the action was halted last month by MLB, New York Mets‘ outfielder Michael Conforto suffered an untimely injury that, if the season had started on time on March 26, would have kept him out of the lineup at least for the first few days of 2020, with the potential for a more extended absence.
However, time was, and is, currently favoring those who are currently injured and looking to miss the least possible games. Conforto is in that group and by all accounts, he is showing marked improvement that can lead us to believe that he can be ready whenever the season starts.
The slugger suffered what the New York Mets named as a Grade 1 right oblique strain, which is the mildest of them all. However, since those types of ailments are very tricky and they have a rather high aggravation rate, the team decided to make sure its star outfielder was well-rested and recovered, so they shut him down.
Days later, MLB announced that the Mets or any other MLB team for that matter would be playing games because of the coronavirus pandemic. While that ended up being terrible news for us, fans, players, and workers in general, injured players such as Conforto were handed a greater amount of time to overcome their issues.
The Mets’ star is ready to go
The Mets’ right fielder is actually taking regular batting practice, and people inside the team remain very encouraged about the sluggers’ outcome for the 2020 season, if there is one after all this mess.
We are now at the six-week mark of Conforto’s oblique injury, which means that it is highly likely that he would have returned to Mets’ lineup already, or he would be extremely close to a return.
That’s why, if there are no setbacks in the road, the chances are that Conforto’s name will be there whenever manager Luis Rojas delivers his first lineup as the manager of the New York Mets.
Other injured players such as Yoenis Cespedes and Jed Lowrie need to show they can handle “the grind of full baseball workouts in their comeback attempts,” as stated by the New York Post.