Mets' Paul Blackburn 'shocked' by 'freaky' injury bad luck
Paul Blackburn has missed time with a bruised right hand, spinal fluid leak in his back, and a swollen right knee.. Credit: Newsday/Alejandra Villa Loarca
HOUSTON — On Aug. 23, during an otherwise unremarkable night in San Diego, Paul Blackburn absorbed a line drive with his bare right hand and was forced out of the game. X-rays were negative. He expressed optimism that he would be able to avoid the injured list.
And he hasn’t pitched in a real game since, having succumbed to a weird, seemingly unrelated series of injuries that cost him the rest of 2024 and now — because of right knee inflammation — the start of 2025.
“So strange,” Blackburn said.
Manager Carlos Mendoza said: “Man, I feel for him.”
It began with that comebacker, which yielded a bruised right hand. No big deal; the Mets expected him back just a couple of weeks later. But when he was on the brink of returning in September, his back started to bother him — and the Mets couldn’t quite figure out why.
They thought he’d be good to go perhaps just a few days later. When his back continued to hurt, they had to investigate further. It turned out he had a spinal fluid leak, a highly unusual baseball injury, the origins of which remain a mystery to Blackburn. In the offseason, he wound up needing surgery, during which doctors shaved down bone spurs on one of his vertebrae.
Blackburn was something of an unknown entering spring training, but then he aced it. His final preseason outing came Saturday in a minor-league game. By all accounts, it went fine.
Come Sunday, his right knee was a bit sore. Eh, whatever. Sometimes body parts ache.
“Nothing crazy,” he said. “No one was worried about it at all.”
It was way worse when he woke up Monday.
“You could barely see my kneecap,” Blackburn said. “I was shocked.”
His knee had blown up overnight, so the Mets drained it and gave him a gel injection. That requires a seven-day shutdown, meaning he opened this season in the same spot he ended the last one: on the IL.
“He’s been through some freaky injuries, some scary ones, especially the back and the fluid and all of that. Pretty scary,” Mendoza said. “And then he worked so hard in the offseason. He was having a really good camp, feeling good. For this to pop up in his last start during spring training (is unfortunate). But he’ll get through it. The good thing is after a couple of days, he’s already feeling a difference. And we hope we get him back here pretty soon.”
An MRI revealed “just a little bit of cartilage that seemed a little pissed off,” Blackburn said.
“No structural damage. Nothing,” he continued. “Everything we got back from it is good news and everything has progressed really well. So right now it’s just waiting those seven days to be able to rotate on it again.”
Blackburn spent spring training trying to win a rotation spot, a competition he lost. The Mets had him penciled into the bullpen as a long reliever for the first couple of weeks, intending to insert him as a sixth starter come mid-April.
Since the Mets expect him back sometime in April, that may well still happen. As long as nothing else befalls him.
“It’s frustrating,” Blackburn said. “Definitely.”
Hey Siri
Tyrone Taylor drew a second start in centerfield in as many games, leaving Jose Siri as the only Mets position player yet to play through the season’s first 10 innings.
Siri is due to split time with Taylor, and Mendoza indicated he would be in the lineup for the Astros series finale Saturday night. But he rolled with Taylor again because he liked his chances against Houston righthander Hunter Brown’s skill set.
“Siri is going to get a lot of opportunities here,” Mendoza said.
Extra bases
The Mets announced that righthander Brandon Sproat, their top prospect, won the John J. Murphy Award, given annually to the best player who was in major-league spring training for the first time . . . Mendoza offered kudos to righthander Huascar Brazoban, whose 2 1/3 scoreless innings Thursday kept the Mets in the game and spared other relievers from having to enter when the Mets were behind. “Pretty much saved our bullpen,” Mendoza said. “The fact that he was able to do that . . . was huge” . . . Signed to a one-year, $4.25 million contract in December, Griffin Canning will start Saturday in his Mets debut. He recently noted that he wrapped spring training with “a better understanding of who I am as a pitcher,” specifically how to use his pitches more effectively. He had a 5.19 ERA for the Angels last year.
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.
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