ATLANTA -- The Mets' pitching plans for the postseason, amended after Pedro Martinez's conspicuously flawed performance on Wednesday night, now have definition, at least for the first two games of the National League Division Series. And part of that definition is, as the club had feared, no Martinez.
Hours after the club finally got around to the starting assignments -- Game 1, Orlando Hernandez; Game 2, Tom Glavine -- general manager Omar Minaya announced that Martinez would not pitch in the postseason because of a muscle-tendon tear in his left calf, an injury detected via MRI exam Thursday after Martinez had returned to New York for tests. A tear of a muscle in his right calf had been the cause of his month-long late-summer assignment to the disabled list.
While the extent of the new injury was unexpected, Martinez's being unavailable for the postseason didn't come as a shock to the Mets.
"When he walked off the mound [Wednesday] night, I don't think any of us was optimistic he was going to pitch," Glavine said Thursday night after he learned of Martinez's latest malady.
Manager Willie Randolph indicated earlier Thursday that the pitcher he had identified two weeks ago as the Game 1 starter was likely to miss the NLDS and that club wondered how much it could expect from Martinez in subsequent series, should the Mets advance. So when Randolph received word of the new injury, his reaction was characteristically placid.
"You pick up and move on," he said. "I mean, jeez you'd love to have him. But it's not the end of the world. Any time you miss one of your big guys, it stings. But we're a good team."
Or as Glavine said, "You always hear a championship team is more than 25 guys."
After acknowledging Wednesday that he had stressed other parts of his body in his brief and ineffective start against the Braves, Martinez essentially withdrew from the NLDS. He did express hope he might help the Mets in some way -- perhaps in limited relief, perhaps in a one-batter role akin to the one David Cone filled for the Yankees in Game 4 of the 2000 World Series when he faced one batter, Mike Piazza. But Randolph discounted that possibility even before word of the new injury reached him.
Now Martinez, who turns 35 in October, will baseball-incapacitated for four to six weeks with his fourth injury of the year -- the big toe on his right foot in Spring Training, his right hip in June, his right calf in August and now the left calf. Rest with treatment, not surgery, is the course of action he will follow. Minaya suggested the pitcher probably would be outfitted with a boot to reduce strain on the left calf. Martinez wore a boot while he was recovering from the right-calf tear.
Even with Martinez eliminated as a possibility, the Mets specified no starter for Game 3. Instead, the third-game assignment went to the familiar member of the ever-fluid September rotation: TBD. But Steve Trachsel indicated that he had been told unofficially to begin "preparing" as if he will start Game 3.
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Even as a Mets hater, you really have to feel sorry for Pedro. :cry: