Marcus Stroman opts out of the rest of the 2020 MLB season

Things have already not gone well for the Mets in 2020. After losing Noah Syndergaard to surgery and Zack Wheeler to free agency, the team was facing headwinds before baseball even got underway again.

Then the 2020 season happened it seems like things have gotten worse and worse for the Mets. Pete Alonso has struggled mightily in the early portion of the schedule, Marcus Stroman hit the injured list with a calf injury, and Yoenis Cespedes decided to leave the team in the middle of a road trip and opt out of the season.

Well, the bad news about Stroman didn’t end at the calf injury as it turns out.

It was already going to be dicey for Stroman to come back from a muscle tear in his calf. While it isn’t certain how severe his calf injury is, a listed muscle tear is already a bad starting point and factoring in a lack of minor league rehab start opportunities and the shorter season, it may just be true that Stroman was never a sure thing to make it back to the Mets. However, Marcus cited at-risk concerns in his family in his reasoning and that, combined with his injury, likely led him to decide to pack it in this season.

For the Mets, who traded two prized prospects to get Stroman’s services, a 2020 season that was already a struggle personnel-wise and with the team under .500, they have even more questions to answer and not very much time to answer them.