The New York Mets injury news out of Queens on Thursday night is the kind that empties a dugout and quiets a ballpark: first baseman Jared Young was carted off the field in the sixth inning against Philadelphia after teammate Nolan McLean accidentally struck him on the head as the two converged on Justin Crawford's slow grounder.
That is the play. A soft roller up the first-base line, two teammates reading the same ball, both moving hard, neither with the right of way. The pitcher breaking off the mound toward the line and the first baseman charging in are on a collision course by design, and the only thing separating a routine 1-3 putout from a scary one is a half-step of timing. Thursday night, the half-step went the wrong way.
I have watched McLean come off that mound a hundred times this season with his eyes down on the ball. That is exactly what you teach. It is also exactly how this happens.
What I don't have is a diagnosis, and I am not going to guess at one. A cart coming onto the grass is a precaution as often as it is a verdict, and the club will say what it knows when it knows it. The word that matters here is the one that comes from the training staff, not from me.
For Young, this is the ugly interruption to a season's worth of work. He has been the guy taking innings at first for a team still playing meaningful September baseball, and the Mets have Philadelphia again Friday night at 7:16 ET with the calendar getting short. Whoever takes those first-base innings inherits them under the worst circumstances a teammate can imagine.
What I'm watching next is simple and it is not a baseball question. It is the update on Jared Young. Everything else in this series can wait a day.