The clock can soon start on Michael Conforto’s estimated return. It may be ticking for a while.
The Mets outfielder is scheduled to undergo surgery Wednesday in Los Angeles to repair a tear in the posterior capsule in his left shoulder, after which he will have “roughly six months” of recovery ahead, general manager Sandy Alderson said Tuesday.
“It could be sooner than that, but it’s roughly six months,” Alderson said. “If you do the arithmetic, that’s about the first of March. That’s all I can tell you at this point.”
Conforto had been one of the lone bright spots for the Mets in a dark season until he joined the never-ending list of injuries with one swing Aug. 24 that dislocated his shoulder and revealed the tear. Before the injury, he was batting .279 with 27 home runs, 68 RBIs and a .939 OPS during an All-Star campaign.
Though the surgery may give the 24-year old a delayed start to spring training, Alderson was not overly concerned it could hinder his development at the plate.
“The doctors have not indicated that is a risk, that he may not come back to the same strength or the same force of swing,” Alderson said. “My guess is that he will probably have to gradually build to that point. But the fact that it’s his left shoulder, the fact that it’s his back shoulder when he swings, not his throwing shoulder, according to the doctors, is a positive.”
The timetable for David Wright’s recovery was not as clear. The veteran third baseman underwent rotator cuff surgery on his throwing shoulder Tuesday in New York after his brief rehab stint went awry.
Wright has played in just 75 major league games since the end of 2014 while also battling spinal stenosis. He played in three rehab games with the St. Lucie Mets near the end of August before he was shut down and sent for tests.
“We don’t expect that this shoulder surgery is going to be a significant deterrent to his rehab, but we just don’t have a specific recovery time at this point,” Alderson said.
Alderson indicated the injury occurred due to “an overall de-conditioning” that followed Wright’s prior surgeries and the subsequent lengthy layoffs without baseball activity. The 34-year old was originally diagnosed with a shoulder impingement in spring training, but Alderson said that injury became more serious when he attempted to start his comeback in August.
“So when I say I don’t expect [the surgery] will impair his recovery, it’s kind of subsumed in everything else he’s experiencing,” Alderson said. “I think [the recovery time] has to be viewed in the context of everything else that’s still going on.”