CINCINNATI — Injuries to both hands aren’t going to stop Francisco Alvarez from playing baseball this season. The Mets activated the catcher off the injured list Friday in Cincinnati, despite having a broken pinky on one hand and a sprained thumb ligament on the other.
“I feel really happy because I can’t keep playing,” Alvarez said Friday at Great American Ballpark. “I love to play baseball no matter where, so just being here and playing, that makes me very happy and proud.”
Alvarez sprained the ulnar collateral ligament in his right thumb a few weeks ago during MLB’s Little League Classic in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Doctors gave him the green-light to play through the injury, allowing him to put off surgery until the offseason. But he was hit by a pitch in his first rehab game, breaking the pinky on his left hand.
Still, he’s able to squeeze a bat and throw a ball. Hitters didn’t test his arm in Triple-A during his rehab stint, but he took a day to work on throws to second and third base to test his hand. While he can feel that something is off, he doesn’t feel pain.
“I don’t really feel anything, I just feel like [it’s] unstable a little bit when I throw the ball, when I get all the way to the front,” Alvarez said. “So I’ve got to throw the ball a little bit more behind.”
Gripping a bat hasn’t been an issue, which is good for the Mets considering he hit .323 with a 1.054 in July and August after returning from a minor league stint. He regained his power through better swing mechanics during a brief Triple-A tuneup, and came back having made defensive improvements as well.
Luis Torrens got hot in Alvarez’s 11-game absence, hitting .306 with three home runs and three doubles, giving the Mets two solid offensive options behind the plate.
The Mets are impressed with his resilience and willingness to play through injuries.
“I give him a ton of credit for doing this because he could have very easily come to us a day after he suffered the injury in Williamsport, and said, ‘I need to get surgery, we’ll get back out in spring training,’” president of baseball operations David Stearns said. “He did the exact opposite, he came to us and said, ‘Whatever I need to do to keep playing this year is what I want to do.’ He’s done exactly that.”
Still, the team is approaching this with caution. His ability to throw out baserunners hasn’t really been tested, and they’re expecting teams to try to run on him this weekend in Cincinnati, and next week in Philadelphia.
“We have confidence that Alvy is going to do everything he possibly can to get through this, to contribute to help us win,” Stearns said. “But I’d be lying if I said I knew exactly how this is going to play out. This is an injury, and it’s always tough to know exactly how that’s going to progress.”
Hayden Senger was optioned to Triple-A Syracuse in a corresponding transaction.
NEXT TIME THROUGH
Right-hander Tylor Megill (elbow sprain) will make another rehab start Sunday. It could be his last one, but the Mets are not yet ready to commit to putting him in the rotation immediately. They’d like to see how his elbow feels after his next rehab start, and whether there is a greater need for him in the rotation or the bullpen.
Left-hander David Peterson leads the weekend rotation, starting Friday against the Reds. Right-hander Jonah Tong will start Saturday, and right-hander Brandon Sproat will make his MLB debut with a Sunday start. Left-hander Sean Manaea will make his next start against Philadelphia, followed by Nolan McLean and Clay Holmes.
The Mets are comfortable having three rookies comprise half of the starting staff, but Stearns cautioned that the rotation is not set in stone at the moment. The team is also staying open to the possibility of using someone like Manaea in a piggyback role, or behind an opener.
“I think we’re staying open-minded to all of it right now,” Stearns said. “We’re going to go turn-by-turn, as [manager Carlos Mendoza] has said, or really, at this point, series-by-series, and see where we are. Could there be tandems at some point? Sure. We’ll kind of just see where we go for the rest of September.”
