{"id":119566,"date":"2026-04-20T13:22:47","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T17:22:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=119566"},"modified":"2026-04-20T13:22:47","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T17:22:47","slug":"mets-get-encouraging-a-j-minter-update-amid-11th-straight-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2026\/04\/20\/mets-get-encouraging-a-j-minter-update-amid-11th-straight-loss\/","title":{"rendered":"Mets Get Encouraging A.J. Minter Update Amid 11th Straight Loss"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Despite the New York Mets getting swept on Sunday against the Chicago Cubs \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2026\/04\/18\/why-mets-wont-fire-carlos-mendoza-despite-brutal-start\/\" target=\"_self\">which prolonged their losing streak to a dreadful 11 in a row<\/a> \u2014 the club received much-needed news on veteran reliever <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/m\/minteaj01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">A.J. Minter<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>Mets Receive Positive A.J. Minter Rehab News<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Minter has not appeared in a game in nearly a year. In his last outing (April 20, 2025), he exited in the eighth inning with what was later diagnosed as a season-ending lat strain. Before the injury, he posted a 1.64 ERA across 13 appearances.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The left-hander was initially expected to miss the remainder of the 2025 season with hopes of returning in time for Opening Day 2026. However, that timeline changed when Minter underwent surgery on his left lat in March 2026. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now healthy, Minter has begun a rehab assignment in the minor leagues. As of April 20, he has thrown 3 2\/3 scoreless innings between Low-A St. Lucie and High-A Brooklyn. His current timeline for a return to the Majors is late April or early May\u2014an encouraging development for a Mets team in need of bullpen reinforcements.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\"><smartframe-embed class=\"smartframe_wp_element\" customer-id=\"b0c95bc04383cef69c6b47df872135cf\" image-id=\"WmOBQyU6bR33\" style=\"width: 100%; display: inline-flex; max-width: 5249px; aspect-ratio: 5249\/3490;\" ><\/smartframe-embed><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Mets <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2026\/03\/22\/craig-kimbrel-not-on-mets-opening-day-roster-one-reliever-spot-remains\/\" target=\"_self\">signed Minter<\/a> to a two-year, $22 million deal ahead of the 2025 season. As part of an effort to strengthen the back end of their bullpen. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Before joining New York, Minter spent eight seasons with the Atlanta Braves. Over that span, the Texas A&amp;M product posted a 3.28 ERA across 348 2\/3 innings. Striking out 422 batters and recording 36 saves in 384 appearances.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The 32-year-old established himself as a <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/10\/05\/positive-takeaways-2024-braves-season\/\" target=\"_self\">reliable late-inning arm<\/a> in Atlanta, even stepping into a closing role at times. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">His best season came in 2022, when he recorded a 2.06 ERA and 0.91 WHIP over 70 innings while striking out 94 batters, adding five saves, and holding opponents to a .198 batting average.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo Credit: Wendell Cruz-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite the New York Mets getting swept on Sunday against the Chicago Cubs \u2014 which prolonged their losing streak to a dreadful 11 in a row \u2014 the club received much-needed news on veteran reliever A.J. Minter. Mets Receive Positive A.J. Minter Rehab News Minter has not appeared in a game in nearly a year. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5706,"featured_media":119646,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22,1071,35],"tags":[29310],"class_list":["post-119566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mets","category-mlb","category-news","tag-a-j-minter"],"modified_by":"Augustus Oswald, Site Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5706"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119566"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119650,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119566\/revisions\/119650"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}