PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. -- Duaner Sanchez had gone through all of the warm-up steps, throwing on flat ground, long-tossing and then throwing from behind the mound. But when he climbed onto the mound Thursday for the first time this spring, it took just four minutes and 11 pitches for it all to go wrong.
Sanchez hurled the pitch, then bent over, hands on knees, as pitching coach Rick Peterson and assistant trainer Mike Herbst rushed to his side. Feeling a pop in his surgically repaired right shoulder, Sanchez was sent to the clubhouse to be examined by a doctor.
While the Mets and Sanchez downplayed the damage, the sight of Sanchez hunched over in pain threw one more question mark into the status of the Mets' bullpen.
He did not undergo any X-rays or MRI exams Thursday, being examined by one of the team doctors, Dr. Dan Tomlinson. The initial assessment was that it was scar tissue and adhesions from the surgery -- which included adding a piece of his hamstring over the shoulder -- tearing. But general manager Omar Minaya said that while that appears to be the problem, if it does not respond well in the coming days that the team will then send him for an MRI.
"I just felt a tingle all the way down to my hand," Sanchez said. "Nothing major. It's not a ligament, not a tendon, nothing like that.
"I set myself back [Thursday] because I don't want to risk everything that I've been doing for another two weeks. I set myself back and [will] relax and see what happens [today]."
"Basically what we heard is possibly some scar tissue," Minaya said. "We're going to rest him for the day and go from there. The doctors are not alarmed by it, but we'll see how he is [this] morning. They said it's part of the rehab process. Right now, it seems to be a scar tissue. We'll see where it is [today]."
After a sensational first half of the season last year, Sanchez has endured one troublesome episode after another. A cab he was riding in on July 31 was involved in a crash, separating his shoulder and costing him the rest of the season. While rehabbing, he was thrown out of camp for two days until enduring a tearful meeting with manager Willie Randolph and Minaya for his tardiness and his lack of conditioning, coming to camp overweight.
He had worked his way back to this point, the day that he would finally get on the mound. This trouble, he admitted, frightened him.
"It did," he said. "Anything can scare you if you're not expecting it. I've never been hurt in my life so I'm not expecting anything. When it happens, it scares you a little bit. [But you] step back and don't want to do anything major to it."
"Hopefully, it's some adhesions popping loose," said Randolph, who was on the way to Orlando and did not witness the bullpen session. "We'll see what happens [today]. I'm not concerned if that's what you're going to ask me. We'll just see how he feels.
"It could be something as simple as post-op stuff. Every once in awhile when you're trying to stretch out you might get some of that pulling in there, so hopefully that's all it is. I wasn't counting on him. It's not like it's a setback as far as the season. I didn't think he was going to be ready anyway."
For now, the Mets have Billy Wagner at the back end of the bullpen -- although he endured a four-hit, five-run inning in the Mets' 7-1 loss to the Braves on Thursday -- and then questions. Without Sanchez at the start of the year or Guillermo Mota, who is suspended for the first 50 games of the season for violating the league's drug policy, they are relying on Aaron Heilman (who has had bouts of elbow tendinitis this spring after undergoing off-season surgery) and Scott Schoeneweis as set-up men.
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