“If what JJ Putz says is true, The Mets’ front office is a total disaster,” opines our good friend Tim Cook, so enamored with the former Mariners closer that he took time to forward an interview Putz did last Friday with CSN.com’s Sox Drawer. Signed by the White Sox this off-season, Putz’ remarks about his brief tenure in Flushing will seem awfully familiar to anyone conversant with the club’s recent medical history and/or dealings with the media.
“When the trade went down last year, I never really had a physical with the Mets, said Putz. œI had the bone spur (in the right elbow). It was discovered the previous year in Seattle, and it never got checked out by any other doctors until I got to spring training, and the spring training physical is kind of a formality. It was bugging me all through April, and in May I got an injection. It just got to the point where I couldn™t pitch. I couldn™t throw strikes, my velocity was way down.
œBeing hurt is never fun, especially when you go to a team like New York, where the expectation level is so high, and you™re not able to do what you know you can do. (The Mets) gave up a lot to get me, so it was disappointing and frustrating.
Especially when the Mets told Putz not to talk about being hurt with the media.
œI knew that I wasn™t right. I wasn™t healthy. The toughest part was having to face the media and tell them that you feel fine, even though you know there™s something wrong and they don™t want you telling them that you™re banged up.
By June, Putz was concerned that the pain in his elbow would start affecting his shoulder, so he had surgery to remove the bone spur, and was supposed to miss 10-to-12 weeks. However, when he tried to come back in August, he felt some tightness in his right forearm.
œThat™s when (the Mets) told me that I blew my elbow out. That was kind of a shock because I never felt any pain in it.
I keep waiting for the thing that’s going to trigger regime change with the Mets, and being amazed at the parade of idiocies that somehow do not do the trick. This is strictly one of the most outlandish bits of mismanagement I’ve ever heard about (provided that it’s true, of course), for instance, but I’m dubious that anyone is going to be held accountable one way or the other. It’s amazing that a crappy record in April and May could get Omar fired, but the revelation that he failed to have a medical examination done on a 30-something reliever with a history of arm trouble probably won’t do the trick.