Oblique strain KOs Carrasco for 3-4 weeks

Carlos Carrasco’s left-side tightness was diagnosed as something more significant Tuesday.

The right-hander, according to the Mets, has a low-grade oblique strain that is expected to keep him sidelined for the next three to four weeks. Carrasco sustained the injury Monday after returning to pitch in the second inning against the Braves following a 55-minute rain delay.

Right-hander Trevor Williams will likely take Carrasco’s turn Saturday at Philadelphia, after which left-hander David Peterson can slot into the rotation. The Mets have a doubleheader against the Phillies on Saturday and Peterson is slated to pitch one of the games.

The 35-year-old Carrasco is 13-5 with a 3.92 ERA in 126 ¹/3 innings pitched this season. Carrasco’s contract has an option that guarantees him $14 million for 2023 if he reaches 170 innings this season. The recovery timeline provided by the Mets puts that guarantee in peril. But if Carrasco doesn’t reach the innings level, it becomes a club option worth $14 million with a $3 million buyout.

The Mets received three gorounds with a full rotation, which includes Jacob deGrom, Max Scherzer, Taijuan Walker and Chris Bassitt, along with Carrasco. The missing link of that group until Aug. 2 was deGrom, who missed the first four months of the season rehabbing from a stress reaction to his right scapula.

Scherzer spent seven weeks on the injured list while recovering from an oblique strain. Walker and Bassitt had shorter absences from the rotation. Carrasco had been the most durable of the starters to this point, after he missed most of last season while recovering from a strained right hamstring. After the 2021 season, he underwent surgery to remove a bone fragment from his right elbow.

“Carlos has made more starts than anybody on our staff,” manager Buck Showalter said Tuesday before the Mets lost to the Braves, 5-0, at Truist Park. “So I actually look at this as an opportunity to kind of freshen him up armwise a little bit, because he was doing some things nobody really expected — you hoped he would — but he’s exceeded the things we might do, but having [Williams and Peterson] there, we are fortunate.”