This felt like a soul-cleansing of sorts, a 6-2 victory for the Mets over the awful Padres Friday night at Citi Field that featured five hits with runners in scoring position, a few lucky bounces and satisfactory relief pitching. A result well worth the one-hour, 56-minute delay before first pitch for the Mets.
Yet the Mets, now 30-37, are well beyond the point — or, viewing it through a different prism, far away from such a juncture — of one game carrying any significance. They need to start winning series again, and to do that, they must continue to slay the ghosts that still haunt them.
This week, they have encountered the ghost of Ryan Church.
Closer Jenrry Mejia wasn’t available Friday night and probably will sit out Saturday’s game, too, manager Terry Collins said, as the right-hander is battling stiffness in his lower back. The Mets’ manager said the disabled list wasn’t a consideration at this point for the 24-year-old. An MRI exam taken Friday came back clean, Collins and Mejia both said, and Mejia added, in an upbeat Mets clubhouse, “I can pitch, but we’ve just got to be careful.”
Were they careful enough on Thursday, when Mejia sustained the injury? That’s up for debate.
Mejia departed Thursday’s ultimately gruesome, 13-inning, 5-1 loss to Milwaukee in the top of the 11th inning, accompanied by Collins and head trainer Ray Ramirez, after throwing a couple of warmup pitches. He had retired two men in the 10th. The young pitcher set off alarms after the game by saying that he alerted bullpen coach Ricky Bones of back tightness while warming up, and he said that he was in some pain, too.
Collins said he didn’t learn of Mejia’s back problem until the right-hander was heading back out for the 11th.
“[Pitching coach] Dan [Warthen] said, ‘Hey, I heard his back is bothering him’ ” Collins said Friday. “I didn’t say, ‘Why didn’t anybody tell us?‘I just said, ‘I’m going to go check it.’ So I took the trainer out. [Mejia] said yeah, his back’s stiff, and I said, ‘You’re done.’ ”
Late Friday night, Bones confirmed that Mejia shared the news of his back tightness, but not any pain. Bones added that Mejia loosened up as he threw, and that the coach called into the Mets’ dugout to alert Warthen that Mejia had battled some tightness before seemingly conquering it. A decision was made that Mejia’s condition shouldn’t keep him from pitching.
An event like this is not exclusive to the Mets. Nevertheless, it sticks to the Mets more than it would to another franchise because the team still is trying to move past its old medical culture of prioritizing the short term over the long term.
It still makes The Post quiver to think back to 2008, when Church — a new arrival from Washington — suffered one concussion in spring training and then a second on May 20, and the Mets had him back in action May 22 (as a pinch-hitter) and then flew him from Atlanta to Colorado. Church wasn’t the same player for the rest of that season, going on the disabled list from July 6 to August 22, and really, he never was the same player again in his career. He played his last major league game in 2010, for Arizona, at age 31.
The Church mess highlighted a rough stretch in Mets medical history. In 2009, the Mets rushed Jose Reyes back to the field as he battled a right hamstring injury. He pulled himself from a game against the Dodgers in Los Angeles on May 20 — the one-year anniversary of Church’s concussion — and didn’t play again that season. That same season, Carlos Beltran pushed himself through a right knee condition, only to eventually relent in mid-June. He didn’t like that the Mets had encouraged him to keep playing, and that tension led to a full-blown imbroglio the next year, when the Mets accused Beltran of getting the knee surgically repaired without their permission.
Overall, they have encountered less turbulence in this area since Sandy Alderson took over as general manager. Nevertheless, just earlier this month, the Mets lost Juan Lagares to the disabled list with a slow-to-heal rib-cage injury when they played him without even a full day’s rest after he first complained of the problem.
The Mets had to hope that Mejia’s situation would quickly dissipate, and that Lagares will make his way back and contribute. The last thing the Mets need is for any of their many ghosts to grow stronger, and they require many games, not just one, to outdistance their past.