Mets' Francisco Alvarez will miss first month of season with broken bone in hand

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — Mets catcher Francisco Alvarez will miss about the first month of the season because of a broken bone in his left hand that will require surgery.

Monday’s operation will be Alvarez’s second in 11 months. He tore a ligament in his left thumb last April.

This time a fractured hamate bone — a common injury for hitters — will cost him six to eight weeks, according to team officials. That puts him in line to return in late April or early May.

“Alvy is clearly a leader on the team, so losing him for any period of time isn’t great,” president of baseball operations David Stearns said. “But that said, this is a fairly standard procedure. Guys break their hamates with some regularity. We know what the time frame looks like. We’re very confident he’ll be back at full strength.”

Manager Carlos Mendoza said: “It’s a big blow when your starting catcher goes down. But guys will step up. Guys will get opportunities.”

In Alvarez’s absence, backup Luis Torrens is set to receive the bulk of the playing time. There is no obvious third-string catcher to play behind Torrens, but Mendoza noted that the Mets “feel good about” their next wave of depth.

They will look externally for a potential upgrade, Stearns said, but they are unlikely to add anybody of note because Alvarez’s absence is relatively short-term.

Their in-house options, all of whom remain in major-league spring training but none of whom are on the 40-man roster:

* Hayden Senger, 28 in April, knows the pitching staff the best because he has been with the organization since 2018, which Stearns described as an advantage for him. He has never hit much in the minors but is highly regarded as a catcher, winning the organization’s “Platinum Glove” award as the best defender at any position at any level of the farm system in 2023.

* Jakson Reetz, 29, has played eight games in the majors and owns the only big-league experience of this group. He signed a minor-league deal with the Mets in November and on Sunday hit a grand slam (and struck out twice) in the Mets’ 7-6 win over the Nationals. Stearns noted that he knows Reetz from his partial 2022 season in the Brewers’ system.

* Chris Williams, 28, “probably has the most power and offensive upside of the group,” Stearns said. With the Twins’ Triple-A team the past two years, he hit 38 home runs and played catcher, leftfield, first base and rightfield. He also is in camp on a minor-league deal.

“We got three good options there,” Stearns said.

Alvarez’s injury occurred Saturday during live batting practice. When he “felt something,” as Mendoza described it, after his second at-bat, Mets trainers sent him for X-rays, which revealed the fracture of the hamate, which is on the lower outside edge of the hand.

In hamate bone surgery, the bone is removed altogether, so hitters suffer from this problem only once.

“He’s down, obviously, but it’s not the first time. It sucks for him,” Mendoza said. “I’ll see him once he gets back here and we’ll talk more. But he takes it personally. He takes it hard. He cares. We’ll do everything we can in our power to stay positive with him and get him back on the field as soon as possible.”

Alvarez, 23, had been looking forward to what he expected to be a big season, his third as the Mets’ regular catcher. He still may pull that off, but it will have to start later — and after surgery to his receiving hand.

“He was excited to have a spring training, play a lot in spring training, really get his feet under him,” Stearns said. “And so that’s been altered a little bit. He’s a resilient guy. He’ll be back . . . I feel bad for Alvy. We’ll be OK, but I feel bad for Alvy.”

Notes & quotes: Kodai Senga threw 3 2⁄3 innings in a minor-league intrasquad scrimmage. Assistant pitching coach Desi Druschel said his two best pitches out of 50 both were sinkers, a new offering he has experimented with in camp. The battery during his outing: Senga/Senger . . . Clay Holmes struck out eight Nationals in 3 2⁄3 innings, getting up to 67 pitches — his most in a game, he said, since 2018. “It was good to feel the heat,” he said after temps reached the mid-80s . . . Edwin Diaz walked his first two batters and struck out the next three in a 27-pitch scoreless frame . . . Darryl Strawberry arrived for his stay as a guest instructor.

By Tim Healey

timothy.healey@newsday.com@timbhealey

Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.