Mets get worst injury news possible with NL East lead fully evaporated
The New York Mets are now tied atop the NL East with the Braves, which makes the news that Max Scherzer is heading to the IL even harder to swallow.
When the calendar turned to June in the 2022 MLB season, the New York Mets were rooted in the pole position. The club held a 10.5-game lead over the defending World Series champion Atlanta Braves in the National League East and were playing as well as any team in baseball.
Now at the start of September and the final full month of the season, the wheels have come off. With Tuesday’s loss to the lowly Pittsburgh Pirates and Atlanta winning in Oakland, the two clubs are now tied atop the division, the lead completely gone.
The last thing that the Mets need right now is something that would make it even harder to cling onto the NL East. Yet, that’s the exact news they got.
On Wednesday morning, New York put ace Max Scherzer on the IL with a left side injury after he left his latest start after five innings. He’ll miss his start scheduled for Friday, Sept. 9 and will be reevaluated thereafter.
News: Max Scherzer is going on the injured list. He won't start Friday.
— Anthony DiComo (@AnthonyDiComo) September 7, 2022
Max Scherzer injury: Mets in trouble with ace going to IL and division lead now gone
Scherzer going to the IL will mark his second stint out of the lineup this season, though the club appears to be indicating that this will be a much shorter absence.
With that said, the last thing that the Mets need is to miss starts from one of their 1A/1B combo of Scherzer and deGrom, particularly when guys like Taijuan Walker have seemingly started to regress a bit from their early-season dominance, putting more pressure on the aces to right the ship when they take the mound.
Things have gotten bad in New York in a hurry with a series loss to the Nationals and the Pirates loss now punctuating that to make it three straight losses, all in blowout fashion to bad teams.
The Mets are the first team in MLB history to have 3 straight games where they lost by 6+ runs to a team with 30+ fewer wins than them.
— OptaSTATS (@OptaSTATS) September 7, 2022
In normal circumstances, Scherzer would be one of the guys to help right the ship immediately. But now the Mets don’t have that option anymore, making this a dire situation developing in New York as the Braves have shown no signs of letting up in their pursuit of the division crown.
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