Mets fans held their breath Wednesday night when Juan Soto fouled a ball directly off the top of his right ankle in the third inning against the Detroit Tigers. He stayed in the game until the seventh and then exited, sparking immediate panic across all of Queens. Then the good news came in. The X-rays were negative.
Manager Carlos Mendoza confirmed after the game that Soto avoided serious damage. He is being listed as day-to-day with a bruise. No fracture. No torn ligaments. Just a painful contact injury that should resolve on its own in a matter of days, not weeks.
That is enormous news for a Mets team that cannot afford to lose its best hitter for any extended stretch. Soto signed the richest contract in baseball history last winter and has been everything the team hoped he would be. The Mets are slumping right now, and a Soto IL stint would have been catastrophic.
You could see Soto grimacing on the foul ball replays. The ball came off his bat at the worst possible angle and caught him right at the joint. Anyone who has ever fouled a ball off their foot or ankle knows the feeling. It feels broken even when it is not. The instinct is to assume the worst.
The Mets did the right thing by getting him out of the game in the seventh. There was no reason to push it. The X-rays would tell them everything they needed to know, and there was no upside to risking a more serious injury by playing him an extra two innings on a damaged ankle.
Soto will probably miss a couple of games while the swelling goes down. He might pinch-hit if the situation calls for it. The Mets have the bench depth to cover him for a few days without panicking. Mark Vientos can slide into the outfield rotation. Brandon Nimmo can shift over. Brett Baty has been hitting the ball well in Triple-A and could be an option if New York needs another bat.
But the bigger story is the broader Mets injury situation. Catcher Francisco Alvarez tore his meniscus and is looking at six to eight weeks. The pitching staff has been banged up all season. Edwin Diaz has been managing fatigue. The Mets cannot keep losing key players and expect to climb back into the NL East race.
Mendoza has been steady through all of it, but his patience has to be wearing thin. The Mets came into 2026 with World Series expectations and have spent the first six weeks of the season finding new ways to disappoint. The lineup has not produced consistently. The starters have not been sharp. The bullpen has had blowups.
Soto is the one constant. He is the one bat in this lineup that pitchers actively pitch around. He is the one player you trust to come through in a big at-bat. Losing him for any extended stretch would have been the kind of event that turns a tough season into a lost one.
This was as close to a worst case scenario as you can get without it actually being the worst case. A direct foul ball off the ankle is the kind of fluky injury that ends seasons. Soto got lucky, the Mets got lucky, and now they have to take advantage of the reprieve.
Expect Soto back in the lineup within the next three to five games. The Mets need him. He knows it. The fans know it. And after Wednesday’s scare, everyone can finally exhale.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
