COPING WITH REYES' THYROID IN 5 EASY STEPS

5. Jose Reyes sucks ___________ (fill in appropriate sphere shaped object here).
In Reyes' career he's had 3 healthy years, and 3 injury plagued ones. . His ankle (2003), his hamstring (2004 and 2009), his calf (early 2009, separate injury) and now his thyroid (2010) have caused him to miss playing time. Since his legs are most often injured, and his value lies mostly in his speed, (and add that he often seems to be playing without his brain) the Mets have a pretty serious liability in the middle of the infield.

For fantasy purposes, if his condition is serious, I'm going downgrade his health from D (injury prone) to F (Rich Harden).

4. Do we blame the steroids?
No. While the thyroid secretes hormones, they aren't the common hormones associated with muscle or athletic ability. And let's not go there. A thyroid problem is serious.

Worst case scenario: If he has thyroid cancer, he'll have to undergo treatment that will take him out for awhile. It's unlikely that thyroid cancer would be life threatening, but it would mean that his body will have difficulty regulating hormone production, which he will then have to regulate with medication. Permanently. And since it affects energy level, it would probably affect his ability to play.

For once, I'd be curious to know how Reyes has been feeling. I'm assuming that he's feeling 'fine,' which is why I haven't read anything about his condition. If he's overly lethargic, it's more likely that there is something wrong. It's Reyes, though, so lethargic for him may be the level of an average 2 year old.

Thyroid cancer is considered common, with about 40,00 cases reported each year, but it's not THAT common, since there are a dozen other forms of cancer that occur in people more frequently. Oddly enough I don't know more than one person with any other form of cancer, but I know three people in NYC who have a thyroid condition.

Should we blame the water?

3. It's probably not that serious.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves. All that was diagnosed was a thyroid imbalance in a blood test. One blood test. They did a follow up and he was fine. Minaya was just being cautious.

See #2 for why if I were Minaya, I'd probably err on the side of caution.

2. Fire the medical staff, already!
You know another reason why I'm not too worried right now?

Because I, like most Met fans, have absolutely zero faith in the Mets training staff. After their abysmal performance at identifying and treating injuries last year, there should have been a reorganization similar the Yankee management response to the flurry of pitching injuries in '07.
Mets management should have, if only to encourage some level of consumer confidence. They didn't. Shocking, I know.

So, if the the Mets medical staff actually figured out that something may be wrong, it's likely that nothing is.

1. David Wright suffers career ending surgery after dislocating his shoulder and tearing back muscles after suffering a freak accident sneezing while carrying deer meat up the stairs of his hotel room. After driving a motorcycle. From a pickup basketball game.
At this point, nothing would surprise me.

Weird stuff has happened to lots of baseball players. The Reyes one isn't funny. But some of the ones I bring up here were. Good luck trying to figure out all the real life freak accidents to MLB players that I pulled from to generate this headline.