“Rick felt very good. [Al] Leiter’s knee I’m not so sure about. I’ll have to check with him.”BOBBY VALENTINE
Rick Reed will be returning to the rotation for Monday’s game against the Astros and Al Leiter will be pushed back a day or two, according to a clubhouse source. Although Bobby Valentine and pitching coach Bob Apodaca said a decision has not yet been made, all indications point to Reed taking Leiter’s place while the lefty gets a little extra time to rest his wounded knee.
The most clear indicator was that Reed will throw on the side today, which means he will be on schedule to throw Monday, which is Leiter’s scheduled day to pitch. When that scenario was posed to a savvy team member, he indicated it was probably the way it would go down.
“That wouldn’t be too far off,” he said.
The struggling Masato Yoshii, then, will pitch tomorrow as planned.
Neither the Mets nor Leiter are concerned about his left knee, but they thought with Reed coming back from a muscle tear in his right leg, it was a perfect chance to be cautious. Leiter said before last night’s game against the Giants that he hadn’t heard anything. He also said the knee felt fine, but Valentine wasn’t as clear about that.
“Rick felt very good,” Valentine said. “Leiter’s knee I’m not so sure about. I’ll have to check with him.”
Reed threw batting practice for the first time Thursday and reported no problems. He said he would be ready to go whenever called upon and said he wasn’t averse to pitching in a minor league rehabilitation start. General manager Steve Phillips said on Thursday that he thought Reed would be able to pitch somewhere by tomorrow, but Valentine said yesterday it looked like the Sunday plan was now off.
“I don’t think he’ll pitch Sunday,” he said. “He’ll throw [today]. We’ll see how he feels and then he’ll throw off the mound.”
When Reed is activated from the DL the Mets will have to send someone back to the minors. The obvious candidate is Rigo Beltran, the lefty reliever who has been up and down since being recalled from Triple-A Norfolk when Reed was placed on the DL April 12. Technically, he replaced Mike Piazza on the DL at the time.
The Mets had considered sending Yoshii to the minors to work on his mechanical problems, although a final decision had not been reached. But with Leiter in a slightly iffy situation, Yoshii will remain with the big league club at least for now and will make his scheduled start tomorrow.
Leiter hurt his knee, or “tweaked it” as he put it, at some point during his start Wednesday night against the Padres. He wasn’t exactly sure when he did it, but was pretty sure he did it on the mound and not while running the bases. He said yesterday he thinks he may have slipped into a little ditch that Padres starter Sterling Hitchcock dug out in front of the pitching rubber that night.
In any event, he was fitted with a brace and said he really doesn’t feel the injury is anything serious. Although he was diagnosed with a slightly sprained left medial collateral ligament in his left knee, no MRI was taken or planned for Leiter.
But considering it is the same knee in which he partially tore the patella tendon during last year’s Subway Series with the Yankees, the Mets wanted to be cautious. No sense in messing around with the ace of the staff.
Leiter, 1-2 with a 4.09 ERA, struggled early in the season but has come back strong with a pair of good outings, against the Padres in which he gave up only one run and against the Reds when he got his first win. But even when he struggled he never questioned his stuff or his ability and stuck with his program.
Reed is 1-0 with a 3.00 ERA and made only two starts before being injured. He partially tore his calf muscle while running the bases in Montreal, but as with most of the injuries the Mets have suffered this year, it wasn’t as bad as originally thought.
In fact, the only thing that slowed him down in his recovery was a stomach flu that forced him to miss two important days of rehabbing.