Piazza, bench take hit as foul tip may force move
BY ROGER RUBIN
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER
The Mets' latest wound was Self inflicted. And they could be feeling it for a few days.
Mike Piazza was lost for most of last night's 4-1 loss to the Astros at Shea when a foul tip off the bat of Todd Self nailed him on the wrist just beneath his catcher's mitt. The team's fourth-best RBI guy gritted his teeth through the last batter of the 1-2-3 first, but didn't hit in the bottom of the inning.
Backup Ramon Castro entered as a pinch-hitter as Piazza had X-rays. The only break the Mets got last night was that those turned out negative. Castro drove in the team's only run with a double in that first-inning at-bat, and then the Mets went 0-for-11 with runners in scoring position the rest of the way.
"Right away it really was bugging me and I just tried to get through the inning," said Piazza, who is batting .254 with six home runs and 28 RBI, but is hitting .344 over his last 18 games. "Once I took my glove off for a while, it ballooned up. . . . It was pretty bad."
Piazza's left wrist was wrapped tightly in the clubhouse after the game and he said he'd already iced it three times in an effort to keep swelling down. Piazza was trying to backhand the ball when "it hit me pretty square, pretty flush." There is no MRI exam scheduled and Piazza declared himself "day-to-day." It's unlikely he will play today.
The Mets are now looking at a rash of small injuries. Doug Mientkiewicz has a bruised pectoral muscle, didn't play last night and is not expected to play today either. Miguel Cairo's strained hamstring has him shelved as well, and although Cairo said he could have been used to pinch-hit last night, manager Willie Randolph indicated he had no intention of playing him. Piazza's injury could make an already thin bench even thinner and necessitate a roster move. The Mets have carried 12 pitchers on the 25-man roster, but may need another position player.
"It's part of the game," Randolph said. "Bumps and bruises are part of what you do. As long as we have nine guys, we'll be able to play."
It's difficult to know exactly what the Mets would do if Piazza is out for a few games. After Castro, Mientkiewicz is considered the third catcher. If Mientkiewicz couldn't be the backup, that job might fall to Chris Woodward, who said that he has never caught in a major league game, but was "the emergency, emergency catcher" during his rookie season with the Blue Jays."
"Hopefully it shouldn't be too long," Piazza said. "It's touch and go. It's always better when you get hit where there's a little meat around it, but there you don't.
"We'll see if it's not too bad tomorrow and take it from there. . . . The doctor said he wants to look at it (today) as an indicator and if it's worse, it might be a little bit longer."
