NEW YORK \u2014 New York Mets slugger Juan Soto batted second and served as the designated hitter Saturday after being reinstated from the 10-day injured list ahead of the team\u2019s game against the Houston Astros.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no manager in the world that wouldn\u2019t want to pencil him in the two hole everyday,\u201d interim Mets manager Andy Green said.<\/p>\n
Soto returned to the last-place Mets after missing 31 games with a grade 2 strain of his left calf. The five-time All-Star\u00a0landed on the injured list\u00a0after battling the issue for about a week before he left a July 24 game against the Dodgers in discomfort.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said he was going to be back before the year was out and he was back before August was out,\u201d Green said.<\/p>\n
The IL stint was the second this season for Soto, who was sidelined for 15 games with a right calf strain in April \u2014 his first trip to the IL since 2021, when he was with the Washington Nationals.<\/p>\n
The Mets fell into the NL East cellar by going 3-12 during Soto\u2019s first stint on the shelf but were 17-14 in his recent absence despite a massive trade deadline selloff.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s worked incredibly hard over the last few weeks \u2014 a lot of it behind the scenes without people seeing it,\u201d Green said. \u201cHe\u2019s pushed himself in a way that, frankly, you don\u2019t see a lot of veterans push themselves when your team is in this type of situation that we\u2019re in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Green said he expects to get the Mets\u2019 four outfielders \u2014 Soto and fellow veteran Luis Robert Jr. along with rookies Carson Benge and A.J. Ewing \u2014 into the lineup on a daily basis. Robert, who missed almost three months earlier this season with a back injury before beginning to play left field after the deadline, was off Saturday after appearing in the previous four games.<\/p>\n
Soto, in the second year of a 15-year, $765 million deal, is batting .283 with 21 homers and 52 RBIs in 84 games. He led the NL with a .947 OPS upon being injured.<\/p>\n
The Mets made room for Soto by optioning infielder Eric Wagaman to Triple-A following Friday night\u2019s\u00a03-1 loss to the Astros.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 New York Mets slugger Juan Soto batted second and served as the designated hitter Saturday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":791795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2396],"tags":[5,101,4,1690,61,2548,4203,185,10665],"class_list":["post-791794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-mets","tag-baseball","tag-mets","tag-mlb","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-mets","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkmets","tag-sports","tag-top-stories-trt"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117181073572677647","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791794","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=791794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/791795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}