{"id":578676,"date":"2026-02-18T04:42:35","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T04:42:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/578676\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T04:42:35","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T04:42:35","slug":"mets-wisely-being-proactive-with-luis-robert-jr-who-provides-star-power-when-healthy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/578676\/","title":{"rendered":"Mets wisely being proactive with Luis Robert Jr., who provides star power when healthy"},"content":{"rendered":"

PORT ST. LUCIE – So the\u00a0Mets<\/a> are being proactive with Luis Robert Jr.<\/a>, drilling down on the causes for his chronic leg injuries, and intending to keep him out of games while their medical and sports performance people work to \u201cstraighten out\u201d some of the reasons that have kept him from achieving his potential.<\/p>\n

It speaks to the gamble they\u2019re taking on Robert Jr. in a trade with the Chicago White Sox for his $20 million salary, as well as the frustration of trying to keep such a high-ceiling athlete off the injured list.<\/p>\n

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But it\u2019s also a good thing, especially in this day and age when there is so much science and technology applied to the cause and prevention of injuries.<\/p>\n

All the more so in the case of the Mets. <\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t too many years ago, remember, when the Mets were heavily criticized for their handling of injuries, either for being too slow to react or for somehow making injuries worse with treatment.<\/p>\n

With that in mind, after listening to Carlos Mendoza announce\u00a0the \u201cprogression\u201d plan for Robert, as well as three other players,<\/a> I put in a call to Jim Duquette, the SNY analyst and former Mets GM.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d seen the Robert Jr. news as well, and so when he saw I was calling, he answered his phone by saying with a laugh:<\/p>\n

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\u201cI know why you\u2019re calling. Jose Reyes?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSorry, Jim,\u201d I said, laughing a bit myself. \u201cIt\u2019s the first thing I thought of.\u201d<\/p>\n

Duquette, after all, was the assistant GM to Steve Phillips in 2003 when the Mets became so perplexed by Reyes\u2019 recurring hamstring injuries and an examination revealing that one leg was shorter than the other, that they deferred to track and field experts who tried to change Reyes\u2019 running style.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were going with the experts in the field of sprinting,\u201d Duquette recalled. \u201cBut it didn\u2019t work. Jose wasn\u2019t comfortable with it and eventually went back to his old style. These days, they probably would have realized it was a hip issue that was causing the difference in leg length and treated it from there.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI mean, as an industry, baseball is light years ahead of where we were then in terms of sports medicine and science. Actually, I like what the Mets are doing. The White Sox have not been a forward-thinking organization. They\u2019ve been old-school, where the Mets have become very forward-thinking with this stuff. I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if they get a good result from what they\u2019re doing. It\u2019s smart because Robert has incredible skill when he\u2019s right. He just hasn\u2019t been able to stay healthy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Duquette, by the way, reminded me that he was gone from the Mets by the time they put Ryan Church on a cross-country flight with a concussion, another rather infamous injury of the many that seemed to become full-blown controversies over a period of several years.<\/p>\n

\"Jose<\/p>\n

Jose Reyes \/ Kirby Lee – USA TODAY Sports<\/p>\n

But as Duquette pointed out, this is a much different organization these days.<\/p>\n

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For that matter, as one Mets person told me, \u201cSteve (Cohen) doesn\u2019t just spend on players. When he took over, he invested in making every facet of the organization top-notch, and sports science and performance was a big part of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

That said, you can make the case that injuries are more of an issue in all sports than ever these days, though a lot of baseball people believe that\u2019s mostly a byproduct of the modern athlete building their body to the limit and stressing it to the extreme.<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s probably a lot of truth to that as well. Duquette, for example, noted that what helped Reyes eventually avoid chronic hamstring injuries, and thus rack up 517 stolen bases over a 16-year career, was that \u201che learned how to run, and run fast, without going max effort all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

More recently, the Mets\u2019 new emphasis on injury prevention has paid off in helping keep the once-chronically injured Brandon Nimmo relatively healthy, in part by bringing him along slowly in spring training as they will now with Robert Jr.<\/p>\n

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They\u2019re taking similar caution with Jorge Polanco, wanting him to strengthen a knee that had surgery in 2024, as well as Brett Baty, who tweaked a hamstring while working out before camp opened, and Francisco Alvarez, in hoping to avoid the various hand and wrist injuries that have plagued him the last couple of years.<\/p>\n

But the headliner is Robert Jr., mostly because the Mets are hoping he\u2019ll stay healthy enough to reach the potential that made him an All-Star in 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe tools are there,\u201d Mendoza said. \u201cHe\u2019s got a chance to do something special if he can stay healthy. When we traded for him, our trainers put their hands on him and identified some of the things, especially in the lower half, that needed to be straightened out.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s going through full workouts, he\u2019s going to be getting live at-bats, but as far as putting him in game settings when he has to full-go, whether it\u2019s beating out a ground ball\u2026we\u2019re not going to put him in there out of the gate.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Robert Jr. is on board, and why not? He believes, as he said in a media interview, that injuries are the primary reason his numbers have fallen off dramatically since his 38-home runs season in 2023, when he made the AL All-Star team.<\/p>\n

\u201cHealth, that\u2019s the No. 1 thing,\u201d he said. \u201cIf I stay on the field as consistently as I can, I know things will go the way I want.\u201d<\/p>\n

He offered evidence of that last summer, when the Mets were interested in trading for him, only to be put off by the asking price.<\/p>\n

Over 31 games in July and August, Robert slashed .298\/.352\/.456 with five home runs, 18 RBI, 24 runs scored and 11 stolen bases, resembling his 2023 form.<\/p>\n

Then he suffered another hamstring injury, severe enough that it ended his season. The Mets are hoping they can change all of that, and their own injury history as well.<\/p>\n

No offense, Jim.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PORT ST. LUCIE – So the\u00a0Mets are being proactive with Luis Robert Jr., drilling down on the causes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":578677,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2379],"tags":[5,226,358,1443,138,49,2561,34087,120,1161,369,101,4,25160,396,2562],"class_list":{"0":"post-578676","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-white-sox","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-brandon-nimmo","10":"tag-brett-baty","11":"tag-carlos-mendoza","12":"tag-chicago","13":"tag-chicago-white-sox","14":"tag-chicagowhitesox","15":"tag-jim-duquette","16":"tag-jorge-polanco","17":"tag-jose","18":"tag-luis-robert","19":"tag-mets","20":"tag-mlb","21":"tag-robert-jr","22":"tag-white-sox","23":"tag-whitesox"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116089806151308076","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=578676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578676\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/578677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}