New York Mets catcher James McCann is headed to the 10-day injured list due to an oblique injury suffered during Saturday afternoon’s 5-4 victory over the Miami Marlins at Citi Field, the team announced Sunday afternoon.
There is no timetable for his return, but manager Buck Showalter admitted that it will take longer than the 10-day injured-list period for McCann to return to full health.
At the catcher’s spot, Pat Mazeika was recalled from Triple-A and activated on Sunday to serve as Tomas Nido’s backup.
The injury occurred during the sixth inning when he made a swinging, rotating tag at home plate of Jesus Sanchez.
“It’s the nature of what these guys do for a living. It’s very demanding,” Showalter added. “Sometimes the body doesn’t cooperate and there’s a play that puts you in harm’s way. When he jerked around to make the tag at the plate, it was a great tag. It was a big part of winning that game yesterday.”
The 32-year-old McCann had returned for just nine games after missing the previous 42 with a wrist injury that required surgery.
While he struggled for a majority of his 30 games this season, the veteran backstop recorded one home run and four RBI over his previous five games.
“I’m disappointed for him,” Showalter said. “I know how hard — the trainers had been talking about how they hadn’t seen anyone work harder to get back from that hamate. He was really disappointed last night.
“He was starting to get some strength in there and get some offensive force. Too bad.”
Showalter revealed after the Mets’ 2-0 loss to the Marlins on Sunday that Starling Marte has avoided an injury-list stint and is considered day-to-day after leaving Saturday’s game early with a groin issue.
Everything came out fine. Just slight inflammation.
“I’ve been feeling it for a couple days but yesterday I thought it was something I thought I could play through but it got worse,” Marte said through a translator. “So we decided to get out of there and get a good look at it while it was going on.
“We’re still getting some treatments done. I’m going to try to get out there as soon as possible.”
