Jose Reyes is vowing to make a quick recovery from his latest hamstring setback.
How quick?
“I’ll be ready for spring training,” Reyes guaranteed to The Post yesterday.
Reyes also revealed the injury he suffered Tuesday was just a partial tear of the right hamstring muscle, a development that likely means the shortstop won’t need surgery for that specific ailment.
Six weeks or more of rest and therapy — not surgery — is usually recommended for hamstring injuries unless there is a complete tear.
Reyes, however, might soon need surgery to reattach his completely torn right hamstring tendon and remove scar tissue that has built up around the tendon since he tore it in early June.
Asked by a Post reporter how he was feeling, Reyes reached behind his right leg and said, “Not too good.”
Reyes, however, brushed off speculation in the wake of this week’s setback that his latest leg injury — combined with the tear of his hamstring tendon — could jeopardize his 2010 season or even be career-threatening.
“They don’t know what happened,” Reyes said. “It’s nothing like that.”
The Mets did not make any announcements yesterday about Reyes’ status, although one high-ranking team official said the club fully expects Reyes to be available for the start of spring training.
The Mets expect to discuss Reyes’ situation further today before they open the season’s final series at Citi Field, against the Astros.
The club, however, continued to face questions about its handling of Reyes since he pulled himself out of a game at Dodger Stadium on May 20 complaining of pain in his right calf.
After receiving a cortisone injection, Reyes was running in Port St. Lucie in early June when he suffered a complete tear of the right hamstring tendon.
If Reyes had opted for surgery at the time, the recovery period — about two months — would have allowed him to return to the Mets’ lineup by August.
Instead, Reyes pressed on with a combination of rest and therapy that resulted this week in him adding another injury to his already weakened right leg, and missing the rest of the season.
“That was the turning point in the season, not getting Reyes back, just because of how important he was to what we were trying to do,” manager Jerry Manuel said this week as the Mets were in the process of being swept in Washington by the lowly Nationals.
What remains unclear is if the Mets are entirely responsible for ruining Reyes’ season by rushing him or if Reyes shares the blame. After all, the Mets can’t force anyone to go under the knife, and Reyes told reporters last month at Citi Field that he wanted to return this season and always considered an operation to be “the last option.”
The latest woes are reviving Reyes’ long-dormant reputation as a player who can’t stay healthy.
Reyes had trouble even getting on the field early in his major-league career and was limited to just 54 games in 2004 due to various leg problems that even prompted the Mets to tinker with his running style.
Reyes put that reputation behind him starting with the following season, and never played in fewer than 153 games over the next four years. In fact, he appeared in 161 games in 2005 and 160 games in 2007.
Now this.
“With his speed and range, it would have been exciting to watch him perform [at Citi Field] on a daily basis,” Manuel said.
Additional reporting by Paul Schwartz