The Star Ledger, ESPN, and other sources have printed new stories regarding Jose Reyes’ condition.
The summary seems to be that Jose must not only avoid athletic activity and basically anything resembling strenuous exercise, but indeed must not raise his heart rate, until his elevated thyroid level returns to a more normal area. The cause, unknown at this time, has been speculated as possibly being a virus or Jose’s diet.
According to ESPN, after exercising Monday and Tuesday, his levels were elevated to unhealthy numbers again.
Hence, Jose must avoid exercise until his thyroid levels stabilize. Unfortunately, no one really seems to know when this will be. The thyroid will return to normal with rest and dietary changes, but again, it is uncertain how long this will take to stabilize and become hopefully permanent for Jose. His doctor insists that this will not have any adverse effect on Jose’s baseball ability long-term, but for 2010, we simply cannot know right now if it will be a few weeks or a few months until the situation allows Jose to become an everyday player again.
The estimates still range from 2-8 weeks; Jerry and Omar, according to the Star Ledger, seem to think that this might actually be 1-7 weeks as Jose stopped baseball activities last week. However, as exercise early this week seems to have raised his thyroid levels to unhealthy areas again, perhaps this exercise would make the last week irrelevant to his recovery timetable.
All media outlets seem to agree that Jose simply must avoid exertion until the levels come down and remain down, which of course means that we really do not have any idea how long he will be out.
Jose’s agent Peter Greenberg, perhaps the only person thinking long-term and about Jose as a person, said he views this as “good news” as this is a “completely curable, treatable situation.”
Regarding the somewhat differing evaluations of the situation which have come from various Met sources lately, Greenberg also commented on the initial optimism Jose showed, as well as on his attempts to work out Monday and Tuesday: “I think all the results weren’t in yet,” Greenberg said. “So guilty of speaking a little bit too soon, unfortunately.”
So the confusion may in fact not necessarily be people lying, or being guilty of incompetence or the inability to communicate, but perhaps might just be human beings naturally responding to never-ending media pressure demanding comment without having all of the information.
As Jose apparently worked very hard all winter, and has always been in fantastic shape as long as we have known him, he should not need much time to get ready to play once the doctors clear him.
However, the latest news seems to indicate that Jose is most definitely in a holding pattern, which will last at the very least 1-2 weeks, and very possibly 7-8 weeks or longer.
One might wonder whether a return to playing will immediately cause Jose’s levels to rise again; the hope is that once the situation is stabilized, this will not occur.
No one knows right now, so here’s a voice respectfully suggesting that hoping and praying for Jose’s return to good health is job one for the Met fan; his return to baseball will follow that happening rather quickly.
Here’s also hoping that the media circus will find another Met story to milk and that Jose will be left in peace to recover.
Get well soon Jose; you have been a great Met and hopefully you will be able to continue to be that by sometime in April.
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