Monday, February 1, 2010

Is This The First Hole In The Dam? Can’t Quite Putz My Finger On It


“I 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.”

JJ Putz is shedding light on a very dark chapter in Mets history. He said these words when he was told by the Mets not to speak about his injury. Putz was injured, and was injured from his first days as a Met. According to Putz, he held the company line, though being in extreme pain.

“When the trade went down last year, I never really had a physical with the Mets. I 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.”

When Putz signed with the ChiSox this off-season, he said:

“They wanted to do a physical right away. They took an MRI. The elbow looked clean.”

Putz didn’t put the Mets down, but he did make it very clear that the Mets were tight lipped about injuries, and he was evidently told not to discuss. This is where the Mets still haven’t learned. They think they can fool everyone, and they don’t realize they are three steps behind, not one step ahead. I really wish the Mets would have signed Putz because NY didn’t get to see how good this guy is. Now the fans on the South Side of Chicago will benefit from the increasing mistakes made by this organization.

Putz summed it up nicely when saying:

“That it’s my career, and when you know something doesn’t feel right, and they want to take these littlesidesteps to do something, and just wait and wait and wait, you got to get it taken care of instead of trying to prolong the inevitable.”

Source: CSN Chicago


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