David Wright's rib cage injury, which the Mets didn't consider very severe and which was only expected to keep him out of game action until early next week, may be a little worse than everyone thought. Wright is flying back to New York so he can be examined by team physicians tomorrow at the Hospital for Special Surgery.
What's more, it's "probable, even likely" that Wright will need a cortisone shot to reduce the pain and inflammation in his side. Through it all, the team and Wright will likely insist that there's nothing serious going on and that Wright will be ship-shape after a modest recovery period. That's fine, and even an extra week or two on the shelf will be mitigated somewhat by Wright's early arrival to Spring Training (far more than we can say for the grission-less Ruben Tejada, who had the audacity to show up merely on time), but things like cortisone shots and hospitals for special surgery rarely intrude on the discussion about perfectly healthy individuals with short-term trajectories for full recovery.