…or perhaps for good. That’s the mega-discouraging word from the Mets GM today, telling the New York Post’s Bart Hubbach the club’s 36 year old first baseman Carlos Delgado —arguably their most valuable player in 2008 — “has a multitude of potentially career-ending problems in his ailing right hip.”
Minaya said team doctors have determined that Delgado has an impingement in his right hip, a small bone spur in the hip and a partial tear of an unspecified area of the hip.
A hip impingement is a lack of space between the neck of the hip socket and its rim; it causes them to jam together when the hip is flexed. That can lead to labrum damage, as well as degenerative arthritis.
Minaya said the arthritis, which potentially could end Delgado’s career, is something the GM has “heard” when talking to the team’s medical staff about his first baseman’s hip.
Minaya also did not rule out surgery for Delgado, who has battled hip problems the past two seasons and hasn’t played since last Sunday against the Pirates.
“I wish I could tell you that I felt a little bit better today, but it’s about the same,” Delgado said. “If it doesn’t get better, we’re going to have to visit other options.”
Delgado is receiving what he described as “mobilization therapy” in which his leg is pulled in an effort to create more space in the hip socket.
Few of those who picked the Mets to win the NL East would’ve done so had you told them Fernando Tatis was a candidate to play 125 games at first base. WFAN’s Mike Francesca seriously suggested San Diego’s Adrian Gonzalez as a trade target (“a very underrated player” mused Francesca), though he’d just as well suggest the Mets bring back Carl Everett (currently hitting .391 for Newark of the Atlantic League). If Alex Cora doesn’t need a first baseman’s mitt, neither does Jurrasic Carl.