JUPITER, Fla. — Jeff McNeil still doesn’t know when he’ll face live pitching.
He doesn’t know when he’ll make his Grapefruit League debut in 2024, though manager Carlos Mendoza estimated that he’s still a week or 10 days away from playing in any type of game.
There are other checkpoints — soft toss, machine rounds, traditional batting practice — that a progression back to hitting needs to meet first.
But for his workout Saturday at the Clover Park complex — mostly dry swings and about 30 others off the tee — McNeil didn’t feel the left bicep soreness that altered his spring last week.
That, he said, was a “very positive sign.”
“No problems at all,” McNeil said before the Mets traveled to face the Cardinals at Roger Dean Chevrolet Stadium, “so feeling good.”
The bicep soreness wasn’t connected to his partially torn left UCL, which ended McNeil’s season in late September after a slide into second base turned disastrous.
Doctors reassured him of that.
He hadn’t felt any bicep soreness or elbow discomfort in offseason swings until the one last Thursday in the cage, when it tightened up on the second baseman.
“Thought it was good to shut it down,” McNeil said, who added he didn’t want the bicep issue to become a “bigger problem” by pushing through it. “Experienced a little bit of discomfort, so just trying to build back the strength.”
It created a different timeline for his spring.
He moonlighted as an infielder and runner on the back field Friday, joking that instead of MLB players stealing at-bats from minor-leaguers — the usual occurrence in those settings — someone else snagged his plate appearances.
That didn’t create the same flow as a traditional game, but McNeil still logged innings in the field and expects to get enough reps overall ahead of the regular season.
Eventually, McNeil will erase the final stages of his recovery to make his return, and it’ll mark a pivotal step toward reversing his disappointing 2023 campaign.
A year after winning the National League batting title and signing a four-year, $50 million extension, McNeil’s average dipped from .326 to .270 in 2023.
His OPS spiraled from .836 to .711.
His progress toward fixing that will now involve navigating a disjointed spring, but Saturday, at least, provided a stride toward normalcy.
“He’s moving in the right direction,” Mendoza said.