Mets left-hander A.J. Minter seems to be trending towards spending the first few weeks of the season on the injured list. He tells Anthony DiComo of MLB.com that he’s about a month behind the other pitchers in camp. He hopes to get into a Grapefruit League game before spring training is done but isn’t guaranteed to do so. The injury tracker at MLB.com lists his expected return as early May.
Minter, 32, underwent surgery to repair a torn lat in early May. It was known that his 2025 season would be ended by that surgery but his timeline beyond that hasn’t been clear. President of baseball operations David Stearns said in December that Minter was questionable for Opening Day. Now it seems that Opening Day has been ruled out. If he is healthy enough for game action near Opening Day, he should require a rehab assignment of a few weeks.
The lefty is coming off a few injury-marred seasons but had a really good run before that. From 2020 to 2023, he gave Atlanta 208 2/3 innings while allowing 2.89 earned runs per nine. He struck out 30.7% of batters faced while only giving out walks at a 7.8% pace.
In 2024, he was putting up similar numbers but made multiple trips to the IL due to left hip issues and ultimately underwent surgery. He missed the rest of that season and became a free agent, which is when the Mets signed him to a two-year, $22MM deal with an opt-out halfway through. He was healthy enough by Opening Day last year to break camp with the Mets but only tossed 11 innings before the lat strain popped up. After missing most of the 2025 campaign, he understandably decided not to opt out of the second year of his contract.
Minter will be looking to get back to that 2020-23 form with the Mets this year but it seems he will still miss a bit of time. That will leave the club to open the season without Minter in the southpaw relief group. Brooks Raley projects as the top lefty for now. They also have Bryan Hudson, whom they acquired from the White Sox a couple of weeks ago. Those are the only two healthy southpaw relievers on the roster. Sean Manaea and David Peterson are lefties but both should be in the rotation.
The Mets have a number of non-roster lefties with big league experience in camp, including Brandon Waddell, Joe Jacques, Anderson Severino and Nate Lavender. If the Mets want to bolster their depth, free agency still has some options, including Justin Wilson, Danny Coulombe, Joey Lucchesi and others. It wouldn’t be surprising to see the Mets work the waiver wire, as they were fairly active this winter in rotating players through the spots at the edge of their roster. It’s also possible some more arms become available when pitchers on minor league deals with other clubs don’t break camp and trigger opt-outs.
Photo courtesy of Reinhold Matay, Imagn Images
