Spring News is Bad News

Spring Training was humming along. Players showed up and pledged to maintain or adjust their career arcs, whichever would help the team most. Prospects were going to make an impression. Youth was going to gain experience. Veterans were already setting examples. The previously ailing were feeling never better. Thievable relievers were working on their pickoff move. Former batting champions were aiming to recapture their crown. Everybody was focused on winning, whatever their positional or contractual status. Smiles abounded. The sun of optimism snuck its head through the clouds that lingered all winter.

In other words, there was nothing any sensible person would consider news. Great! I can’t reiterate enough that you pretty much never want actual news to come out of Spring Training. Until Wednesday, Mets camp offered no bulletins, only reassuring updates, presentation of new faces, and a steady stream of happy horsespit to keep the folks back home satisfied that a new year indeed brings new hope. We might have even started buying into the Us Against The World storyline the Mets have been test-marketing, daring all outside the walls of Port St. Lucie that you underestimate us at your own risk.

Then, Kodai Senga, he of the 202 strikeouts and the 2.98 ERA in his MLB rookie year, felt something in his right shoulder. “Arm fatigue” was the word, which sounded not as benign as a dead arm, if not as foreboding as a sore arm in the medical Spring lingo we brush up on annually. It did, however, sound like something.

Hey, where did that sun go?

Oh, it’s still there, save for every fifth-ish day that Senga, the only Met starting pitcher currently answering to “ace,” would have pitched. It’s still Spring, it’s still a new season, it’s still possible Adam Ottavino will come out of the bullpen and hold a runner close. Think good thoughts. Think Kodai’s moderate right posterior capsule strain will heal with rest and treatment and — though he projects to start the season on the IL and stay on it for a spell before loosening up all over again — think at some point he will come off it and be his Ghost Forking self.

Until then, think of Tylor Megill, Joey Lucchesi, Jose Butto or whoever already in orange and blue now gets an additional chance to shine. That’s reportedly what David Stearns is thinking, so we might as well be on the same page with our POBO. These potentially decent alternatives with whom we’re quite familiar will join the potentially decent rotation that was set to line up behind Senga. Keeping the Hot Stove on a low simmer, the Mets signed Luis Severino and Sean Manaea and traded for Adrian Houser to join Jose Quintana as what you might call innings eaters. A lot of innings lie ahead of us. Senga will devour none of them for a while.

But somebody will, just as was the case the first year we did this blog and the Mets lost Steve Trachsel in March and Kris Benson days before the Opener. Just like last year, when Justin Verlander’s availability evaporated the day of the Opener, echoing what happened (albeit with a tad more notice) with Jacob deGrom the year before that. Starters have issues. Throwing a baseball is a leading cause of discomfort. It always happens to us? It always happens to everybody. We just don’t notice everybody else having some version of this problem, because we don’t care about them. That’s why we’re so susceptible to Us Against The World storylines.

It’s not good news, because it’s Spring news. Games that don’t count getting underway this weekend is a good sign. Maybe we can get back to nothing happening.