COMEBACK KID
Jose Valentin returned from the disabled list over two weeks ago and had hits in nine of the 12 games since he had rejoined the Mets.
But it wasn’t until yesterday’s three-hit performance, capped by a three-run home run in the seventh, that the second baseman truly felt he was back.
“I just wanted to get my first RBI since I got hurt,” said Valentin, who suffered a partially torn ACL in Washington on April 30 and now wears a brace on his right knee. “It was a hard five weeks of rehab and you try not to get frustrated.”
Despite his success in the Mets’ 10-2 win over the Athletics at Shea Stadium yesterday, Valentin is aware he’s not the player he was prior to the injury.
“I’m not the same guy I was before,” Valentin said, adding that wearing the brace restricts his lateral movement. “I don’t have the quickness with the brace on. It takes a lot of my motion away. So I have to work hard to get back there.”
Yesterday’s blast, after he singled and scored in the second and singled again in the sixth, should make that process easier. Plus, he is growing accustomed to the bulky apparatus on his right knee.
“After five weeks in the brace, if you’re not used to it, you’ve got trouble,” said Valentin, who also had to wear a brace briefly when he was with the Dodgers in 2005. “But it’s a situation you don’t want to get used to.”
Valentin doesn’t have much choice on that front and he showed what he is able to do in spite of it. He said yesterday he was only trying to drive in his first run since April when he lofted his homer to left to make it 8-2.
“Those add-on runs are always important,” Willie Randolph said.
“I was just trying to get a hit and an RBI, since I hadn’t been able to do that in such a long time,” Valentin said. “I was facing a guy [Jay Marshall] I had never faced before.”
Valentin was more concerned with picking up the ball from the side-armer’s motion than anything else.
“I took the first pitch just to see what it looked like,” Valentin said. “Then I got it.”
And now, perhaps, the Mets have Valentin back. At least he hopes so.
“You try not to frustrate yourself because that just makes things a lot worse and you wind up getting yourself out,” Valentin said. “I don’t think I was doing that, but it’s hard not to.”
Most importantly, he wants to stay healthy.
“I have to think positively,” Valentin said. “You can’t worry about getting hurt, because than it can happen. Of course, I didn’t think I was going to get hurt in the first place. But I’m working even harder now.”
