Jose Reyes is not running [1]. He’s not swinging. He’s not fielding or throwing. He’s not functioning as a baseball player. We understand today he’s resting. With any luck, he’s healing.
But he’s a Met, so I wouldn’t go that far.
Reyes’s thyroid condition has sidelined him for a truly Metsian prognosis of two to eight weeks. Nobody is sidelined from two to eight weeks [2]. Nobody is projected as out from doing anything — not just playing — within a range of 14 days to 56 days. What this means, I’m going to guess, is nobody really knows what exactly is wrong with Jose Reyes or, more pertinently, what it will take to get him back to being a fulltime Met.
Right now, he’s a ghost, hovering over this organization. He and Carlos Beltran, both still on the roster, neither by any means active, each allegedly en route at some point. When 2009 became 2010, we were told this team would be better than the team before it because we’d have, once again, two of our three indispensable men in the lineup every day. “Don’t count on it,” the little Met voice in my head said. “Don’t necessarily count on guys who played 81 games and 36 games the season before.” I wasn’t ready to count on anybody who missed significant time due to injury, including Santana, Niese, Nieve, whoever. In Beltran’s case, it was the knee then, it’s the knee now. In Reyes’s case, nobody could have seen the thyroid coming. We were worried about hamstrings. The hammies are supposedly fine. The thyroid?
The thyroid?
My mother had a thyroid condition. I don’t think it was overactive; quite the opposite, actually. Reyes is a damn sight more athletic than most people’s moms (and dads). Jose Reyes is as athletic [3] a Met as we’ve ever seen. We look forward to seeing him again, on the run, turning the DP, lashing one into the gap that was theoretically created for him. We look forward to him being as healthy a human being as he can be and, because we’re Mets fans, we’d like that to translate into a permanent return that begins to shape up 14 days from now rather than 56…or never.
In the meantime, I looked at the early innings of today’s exhibition game. Cora was at short, just like a lot of last year. Pagan was in the outifield, just like a lot of last year. Castillo…to be fair, he’s supposed to be at second this year, but he reminded me of 2009, too. It was raining and it was 2009 on SNY. Then the rain got to be too much and they put a tarp on the field and the 1963 Yearbook [4] on the air. It cheered me up. That team won 51 games and was a signpost of progress relative to 1962. Then the rain ended, and 2010 is back on the screen, and it’s just minor league scrubs per Spring Training usual, yet I can’t escape the sense that 2009 is in the clubhouse, getting ready for Opening Day.
It’s a lot closer than Jose Reyes is right now.