NEW YORK -- Sean Manaea was about a week away from making his season debut when another setback struck. An MRI taken Monday revealed a 7-millimeter loose body in Manaea’s left elbow. That’s the bad news. The good news is that Mets officials don’t anticipate this costing him more than a few additional days on the injured list.
Manaea received a cortisone injection Monday and expects to return to his Minor League rehab assignment July 1 or 2. If all goes well, he could potentially debut five or six days after that.
“Sometimes, you can pitch with these loose bodies for your entire career,” Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns said, adding: “I don’t think it slows us down too much.”
Manaea, who has been on the IL since Spring Training due to a strained right oblique muscle, began experiencing elbow discomfort during the later stages of his most recent rehab outing Friday at Triple-A Syracuse. He completed the outing but continued to feel abnormal soreness in the days that followed, prompting an MRI.
Those images revealed a loose body, which is typically a bone or cartilage fragment that breaks off the elbow. Doctors told Manaea he’s not at risk of having the fragment rub up against his elbow ligament, making this more of a pain tolerance issue than anything. The cortisone injection he received is intended to reduce inflammation in the area, limiting the amount of discomfort Manaea feels.
“I don’t really have any frame of reference, never dealt with anything like this before,” Manaea said. “It’s definitely something new for me. I hope I’m not just, like, grinding every single outing. I hope this thing kind of subsides and I’m able to pitch through it.
“It’s not, like, that serious I guess. I mean it is, but it’s not like Tommy John or something like that. I don’t think surgery’s on the table right now.”
Whether Manaea will need an operation after the season is a different question, depending entirely on what happens over the next four months. For now, Manaea is focused on making it back to the mound within the next couple of weeks.
“I feel like I’m so close,” he said. “Having hiccups like this is very unfortunate. But I know we’re doing everything we can to make it right, and I’m going to pitch to the best of my ability whenever that is.”
Manaea, 33, was the Mets’ best pitcher last season, going 12-6 with a 3.47 ERA and authoring one of the finest starts of his career in National League Division Series Game 3 against the Phillies. He traces much of his improvement to lowering his arm slot in late July in an attempt to mimic Braves All-Star Chris Sale.
Believing in Manaea’s improvements, the Mets re-signed the left-hander over the winter to a three-year, $75 million contract. But he strained his oblique in Spring Training and suffered a setback shortly after the regular season began, which pushed his return date to early July.
Now, he’ll need another week on top of that.
“It’s not exactly how I wanted to start this contract,” said Manaea, a nine-year veteran of four Major League teams. “It’s very frustrating. I felt like I’ve been doing all the right things -- like the oblique, it sucks. It’s not fun. I wish to be out there very bad. At the end of the day, I can’t really think too much on it other than just doing all the things I can to get back out there and help this team.”
In Manaea’s absence, the Mets will continue to rely on a rotation of Clay Holmes, David Peterson, Griffin Canning, Paul Blackburn and Frankie Montas, the latter of whom made his Mets debut Tuesday against the Braves. Kodai Senga (strained right hamstring) and Tylor Megill (sprained right elbow) are both also on the IL.