It’s been assumed that Johan Santana will return to the Mets sometime in the middle of the year, but the schedule has been somewhat amorphous. Today Sandy Alderson brought the specifics: Santana will throw from flat ground in three months, from a mound in early May and will return to throwing balls in anger and toward enemy hitters in late June or early July.
It’s a long timeline but Santana’s surgery was no routine thing. If I’m the Mets, the longer the better. And that’s the case even if everything clicks and they find themselves competing as late as Memorial Day. Dude is owed $77.5 million bucks over the next three years. Don’t rush it.