Yoenis Cespedes finally offered some answers Sunday. Alas, par for this course, the answers created more questions.
The Mets’ highest-paid player (on an annual basis), who played in only 38 games this season, offered no promises about how much we’d see of him next year, and he even threw out the possibility that the bone calcifications that will sideline him for an extended period could eventually return.
“I cannot say I will play X, Y, Z amount of games,” Cespedes said, through an interpreter, before the Mets concluded their 2018 by playing the Marlins at Citi Field. “That’s not something I can predict so far.”
Mets COO Jeff Wilpon, asked whether the team will prepare for 2019 as though Cespedes won’t be available, said, “I think you probably do have to plan that way, given the fact that it’s uncertain.”
On Aug. 2, Cespedes underwent surgery to remove the calcifications on his right heel. He will have the identical procedure performed on his left heel Oct. 23, he said. This marked his first interview since his surgery; he said he came to Citi Field from Florida (where he has been rehabilitating) this weekend to see his teammates and pay his respects to the departing David Wright.
“Based on what the doctor said, after the second surgery, I will have to spend about four months or so [resting and rehabbing],” said Cespedes, who posted a .262/.325/.496 slash line with nine homers this season. “Then, after that, I will start doing baseball activities, but I cannot be running. That will happen a little later than that.”
When the Mets announced in July that Cespedes would get these dual surgeries — following an embarrassing saga in which Cespedes stunned his employers by announcing the need for the procedures and the Mets responded by downplaying the possibility before the two sides got their stories straight — they threw out a recovery period of eight-to-10 months. The back end of that still seems feasible, yet Cespedes’ injury woes have proven anything besides predictable.
When asked whether he could return to being an elite player, Cespedes, who will turn 33 in October, said, “Even though I’m getting older and the doctor said that there’s a chance that the bone [calcification] can go back again … I will play pain-free, so I can do things like I used to do before.”
Of course, if the bone does calcify again, Cespedes presumably could find himself in the same boat.
Currently, Cespedes said that his right foot feels “way better” than it had prior to the surgery, and then he balanced that by offering, “But in the area where they got in, I still feel pain over there,” he said. “Also in all that area, I feel some numbness that I cannot feel right now. So I cannot say precisely whether I feel way better than what I used to be.”
It’s easy, or perhaps preferable, to forget that on the day before Opening Day, Cespedes sat in the Mets’ news conference room and said: “I think we have a [good] chance this year because this team, for me, is way better than the team we had in 2015, and we went to the World Series. I think we are ready to go.”
Despite how far that statement missed the mark by, he has similar expectations for next season.
“I said we have a very good team. Even though we didn’t have the success we expected to have in the first half, we had it in the second half of the season,” he said. “So I’m pretty confident that we have a good team for making the playoffs next season.”