Getty

Juan Soto of the New York Mets is examined by team trainers after fouling a ball off his ankle during Tuesday’s game against the Detroit Tigers, adding another injury concern for the struggling Mets.

Juan Soto gave the New York Mets another injury scare Tuesday when he exited against the Detroit Tigers after fouling a ball off his ankle, MLB.com correspondent Anthony DiComo reported.

For a last-place Mets team already buried at the bottom of the National League East, any extended Soto absence would turn a miserable start into a far bigger crisis.

Soto, 27, signed a 15-year, $765 million deal with New York ahead of the 2025 season, the richest pact in pro sports history. The expectation was that the six-time Silver Slugger and four-time All-Star would anchor a lineup capable of competing with anyone in the NL. Instead, the Mets have been one of the worst teams in baseball.

Soto’s Exit Puts Mets in Familiar, Painful Spot

This is not Soto’s first health scare of what has already been a turbulent 2026. He missed time earlier this season with a right calf strain, landing on the injured list in early April and sitting out more than two weeks before returning. At one point during that absence, New York lost 12 straight games.

Tuesday’s exit added a disturbing new chapter to the Soto saga. Soto fouled a pitch hard off his ankle in the third inning and stayed in the game at designated hitter, but he did not return when his turn at bat came up in the seventh inning. No formal update had been issued by game’s end, leaving the nature and severity of the injury unclear.

The Soto scare compounds what is already an injury-crisis situation at Citi Field. Shortstop Francisco Lindor has been out since April 22 with a calf strain, Athlon Sports‘ Hugh Green reported Tuesday, with no target return date in sight. Lindor, the club’s defensive anchor and one of its top offensive contributors, had been one of the brightest spots in an otherwise dim early-season picture before going down.

New York Mets Already Thin Without 3 Key Players

With Luis Robert Jr. also on the injured list along with Jorge Polanco, New York has been shuffling its lineup and searching for answers almost from Opening Day. Manager Carlos Mendoza’s club owns the worst record through 40-plus games since the 1993 Mets.

Soto, despite the team’s struggles, had posted solid if not spectacular numbers on the year before Wednesday, with a .264 average with four home runs on the season, and Baseball Savant pegged his average exit velocity at 92.6 mph with a barrel rate north of 20%, the kind of contact quality that makes him important in this lineup.

“Soto is irreplaceable,” Lindor told reporters during Soto’s earlier absence this season, according to MLB.com. “Having him back is gonna help us a lot. He’s a top three hitter in the league, probably top two.”

Lindor’s words land differently now, with Soto himself back on the injury watch list and no diagnosis yet available. The Mets are expecting more details on the ankle once the medical staff has had a chance to evaluate him fully. Until then, a team already running short on healthy difference-makers waits, and hopes for better news than Tuesday delivered.