Mets' Jose Quintana to Undergo Surgery, Out Until at Least July
The Mets will be without one of their newest acquisitions for quite sometime.
Starting pitcher Jose Quintana will undergo bone graft surgery to repair a lesion on one of his ribs, as GM Billy Eppler told reporters on Tuesday.
Quintana will be out until at least July 1, but the Mets are not putting an official timeline on when he might be able to return.
The good news is that Quintana saw a tumor specialist, who ruled his lesion to be benign after a biopsy.
He will now undergo surgery in New York on Friday, which will knock him out for most of, if not all, of the first half of the regular season.
The Mets signed the 34-year-old to a two-year, $26 million deal in December. The lefty made one spring start and pitched in a minor league exhibition game before it was discovered that he had a stress fracture on his fifth rib.
With Quintana out for a while, David Peterson or Tylor Megill will be asked to step up to replace him in the rotation. Peterson has tossed eight shutout innings in Grapefruit League play and Megill has thrown 8.1 innings of one-run ball.
Peterson made 19 starts (28 appearances) last season, pitching to a 3.83 ERA with 126 strikeouts. As for Megill, he had a 1.93 ERA in his first five starts before injuries derailed his campaign.
Fortunately for the Mets, they built strong pitching depth to prepare themselves in case of an injury in the rotation. They will be forced to dip into this depth before the regular season even begins.
Read More:
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