Mets LF/1B Dominic Smith, who was scratched from the lineup on Wednesday due to a sore wrist and has been out since then, is moving in the right direction.
Manager Luis Rojas said Friday that Smith did some early work at the team facility and was scheduled to take swings in the batting cage later in the afternoon.
“You can call it a short progression, just to get a feel for the swing,” Rojas told reporters via Zoom. “He’ll do some and then tomorrow it’s a camp day but we have a sim game going on. We’ll see if he’s gonna participate in that to see live pitching. He got the green light to swing today.”
As far as what caused Smith’s wrist issue, Rojas said he wasn’t aware of any specific swing or play that led to it.
Unless Smith suffers a setback, it’s fair to believe that his status for Opening Day is not in doubt.
But Smith has not played much left field this spring as the team has brought him along slowly due in part to a prior foot injury. Instead, he has mostly been used as a DH, which will not be available to the Mets during the regular season (except in interleague games) barring a late change.
And when it comes to Smith’s readiness to play left field every day from the outset of the regular season, Rojas said it’s something they’ll continue to monitor.
“We feel pretty strong that he’s gonna be okay to play more left field, which is our focus,” Rojas said. “But we’ll definitely monitor how he’s moving out there, how’s the workload and things like that, so we can keep him in the lineup.
“You guys know how productive he is. And we have the pitcher hitting this year, opposed to having the DH like we did last year. Including his bat, it makes us such a good offensive team. We’ll have to see how he keeps responding to playing more and more out there.”