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Job not done after clinching NL East, Phillies still going after top seed originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

LOS ANGELES – The announcement by the Phillies Tuesday before their game against the Los Angeles Dodgers that infielder Edmundo Sosa was being placed on the 10-day Injured List may have caused concern for some. But in reality, as far as Sosa goes, and the other injuries the team is dealing with, all seem pretty good.

“It’s a right groin,” said Thomson. “Just a mild, mild strain. We worked him out yesterday and he still felt it so as a precaution we’re going to IL him, back date him, so he’ll be ready in seven days. He was still getting better but we didn’t want to risk it, especially going to the turf (in Arizona for next series). We decided it best to shut this thing down, get him right and get him back for the last couple of days of the regular season.”

To replace Sosa, the club called up Rafael Lantigua. In Lehigh Valley this year, Lantigua hit .232 in 124 games with 15 doubles, 82 runs and 17 stolen bases. He made starts at third base, shortstop and left field.

Hours before the game, third baseman Alec Bohm was doing his running work on the outfield grass at Dodger Stadium. “Great,” said Thomson of Bohm’s right shoulder soreness recovery. “He’s going to do full workout again today and tomorrow. If there’s no setback, he’ll be activated in Arizona.”

And more good news came from back in Philadelphia on shortstop Trea Turner as he progresses in recovery from his Grade 1 hamstring strain.

“Great. Today he did ground balls, threw across the diamond, full BP in the cage,” said Thomson. “Tomorrow he’s going to do some more jogging and ramp it up a little bit. Probably do the same field work as he did today.”

The goal, and belief, of the club is that Turner will get back in the lineup before the playoffs.

Playoff pitching decisions

After the injury to Zack Wheeler and the way the schedule played out, the Phillies have been throwing three straight lefty starters on the mound in Ranger Suarez, Cristopher Sanchez and Jesus Luzardo. It might not seem ideal for Thomson to have that in the playoffs and the manager isn’t exactly set on who his starters will be.

“We’ll line Sanchy (Sanchez) up for Game 1 no matter what,” he said. “The rest of it all depends on who we play. Yeah, there’s a lot of teams out there that don’t like lefties. And they go with a right-handed lineup or a left-handed lineup, they may want to keep the lefties on the bench. We’ll just have to wait and see.

“I think it has more to do with lineups we face. Being with (Aaron) Nola as long as I have I have so much confidence in him that he’s going to step up in a big game. I think it all depends on the lineups we face.”

No hangovers here

The celebration for wrapping up the National League East went on for a good long time after Monday’s 6-5. So, one might expect a bit of a wonky lineup for Tuesday’s game against Dodger starter Shohei Ohtani. Well, not so much, with the exception of Rafael Marchán starting at catcher.

“They all wanted to play,” Thomson said. “And we still have things we’re going after. Now, when we get on the turf in Arizona, I might rest all the outfielders for a day just to get them off their feet. But we’re gonna go for it, the bye and the number one seed. I think it’s important for us to play in our ballpark because we just play so well and we’re supported so well by our fan base.

“In New York, it seemed like every time, if we were to play Toronto and Tampa, it would be back-to-back on the road. So now you’ve got six or seven days on turf and you could really see the effect on the players. That’s where I really started to pick up on it.”

Ahead of the Mets' first game of three against the San Diego Padres on Tuesday night at Citi Field, manager Carlos Mendoza had updates on several players' injury rehabs and what the organization has planned for starter Kodai Senga. 

What's next for Kodai Senga

The Mets will have the right-hander make a second start for Triple-A Syracuse at the end of this week, but after that, the next step has yet to be determined.

"We'll go from there," Mendoza said about what comes next. "But he's making, for sure, one more."

In Senga's first start with Syracuse last Thursday, he allowed one run on three hits over 6.0 innings with eight strikeouts and no walks. The 32-year-old got 18 whiffs on 43 swings with nine called strikes for a 36 percent called strike-whiff rate on 74 total pitches. The forkball was particularly good; he threw 17 in total and got 11 whiffs on 11 swings.

After Mendoza spoke, president of baseball operations David Stearns, in his regularly scheduled media availability, laid out what the organization would need to see from Senga to merit bringing him back to the majors.

"Results always matter, results are a part of it, and it's where is the stuff?" Stearns said on Tuesday. "Has the stuff ticked up to the point where we feel comfortable that it's going to consistently get major league hitters out?"

Luis Torrens playing at Syracuse

Torrens is playing on Tuesday night at Triple-A and is scheduled to catch seven innings, Mendoza said. "We'll see what we got there," he added about the backstop's rehab from a right forearm contusion.

Torrens posted a .225/.287/.348 slash line for a .635 OPS with five home runs and 29 RBI over 87 games. He had been much better since the All-Star break, batting .275 with a .764 OPS over the final 74 plate appearances before landing on the IL on Sept. 7.

Tyrone Taylor ramping back up

The center fielder had to step away from his injury rehab as he went on the paternity list, but is set to resume activities as he looks to work his way back to the big-league roster.

"The baby was born yesterday, so he's supposed to be back here [Wednesday]," Mendoza said. "And then we'll get him going again and hopefully start playing some rehab games up here shortly."

Taylor landed on the IL with a hamstring strain at the start of the month. In 109 games with the Mets on the year, the 31-year-old has slashed .218/.277/.315 for a .592 OPS. The time on the IL came at a bad time; he had 10 hits and six RBI with a 1.208 OPS in his final seven games.

No update on Tylor Megill

Mendoza did not have an update on the right-hander, who is expected to see a specialist this week. 

"He's got another in-person visit this week, and then we gotta wait," the skipper said.

Megill said he felt tightness when throwing his secondary pitches in his rehab start and was sent for imaging.

President of baseball operations David Stearns and the rest of the Mets’ front office had a busy trade deadline this season. After acquiring reliever Gregory Soto in the days prior, Stearns landed Ryan Helsley, Tyler Rogers, and Cedric Mullins on July 31, seemingly shoring up any glaring holes on the roster.

But since that day, the Mets have gone 15-26, and with all of the struggles the starting rotation has had since that point, questions have arisen about why Stearns didn’t address the rotation at all at the deadline. 

Even before the deadline, there were questions about Kodai Senga, Frankie Montas, and Sean Manaea staying healthy and Clay Holmes’ durability during his first year as a starter.

Hindsight is always 20/20, but Stearns said on Tuesday that he would have done things differently had he known where the rotation would be at this point in time.

“I think if I knew exactly how our season would play out, absolutely (I would have approached the trade deadline differently). No question,” Stearns said. “We make the decisions we make at the time with the information we had. I’m very comfortable with the process we went through that led us to those decisions, but yeah, we did not play well during the month of August, and frankly, to this point through September. We’ve had various segments of our team that haven’t performed certainly to the level that we anticipated as we approached the trade deadline, and had I had that knowledge going in, yes, it would have changed what we did.

“I think we’re always trying to project out various possibilities, and there’s a probabilistic nature to everything we do, and we understand that we’re not going to get everything right. We’re unlikely to predict with perfection what seasons are going to look like, what stretches of seasons are going to look like. So I think certainly we have to learn from this and determine whether there are things we could have seen that we did not, but I am confident in our evaluative capabilities and our work on the whole that we’ve accomplished.”

Helsley has struggled with pitch-tipping and consistency, as evidenced by his 10.29 ERA as a Met, and while Rogers has pitched well and Soto has been up-and-down, Mullins has scuffled, posting a .571 OPS in 34 games as a Met.

"I think Cedric came over to a new team for the first time in his career, adjusting to a new organization, little bit of a different role. Got off to a little bit of a struggle, and sometimes that can put pressure on players, and I think he's spoken about that a little bit, that sometimes you can press," Stearns said when asked about Mullins' struggles. "I do think he's beginning to come out of it. I think we're seeing him have a little bit more productive at-bats, staying in at-bats, getting on time with the fastball little bit better. And so that's a really good sign for us."

The question, then, is a simple one: what exactly went wrong?

“First of all I would say we’re not at the end of the line yet, so there are potentially chapters yet to be written, but to this point it’s a fair assessment that our trade deadline, at least some of our trade deadline acquisitions, have not performed to the level that we expected or the level that they have performed at throughout their careers,” Stearns said. “Part of that is streakiness and randomness, and this happens every year in baseball with some trade deadline acquisitions. Part of it is, we need to look and ensure that we’re doing everything we can to help these guys succeed. 

"We take a lot of pride in, when players come here, allowing them to be the best versions of themselves. We’ve talked a lot about that, and so when that doesn’t happen, we need to be honest about that as well and see what more we can do.”

As poor as the Mets have played since the start of August, particularly during the recently snapped eight-game losing streak, the club still currently owns the third and final NL Wild Card spot, sitting 1.5 games ahead of the Arizona Diamondbacks and 2.0 games ahead of both the San Francisco Giants and the Cincinnati Reds.

As Stearns said, the story of the Mets’ 2025 season hasn’t been completed just yet, and all he and the rest of the club can do now is focus on doing whatever is needed to make the dance and play in October.

“I think when you’re sitting where we were in mid-June, we would not have expected to be in this spot,” said Stearns. “There’s no question about that. We’ll have time to evaluate and diagnose and do all of that stuff. For right now, my focus is here from here forward, what can we do to win as many games as possible, and that’s in the regular season and the postseason.”