While the New York Mets play their first official game of the 2020 season on March 26, Cespedes may be joining the Major League club just a few short weeks afterwards.

General Manager Brodie Van Wagenen spoke to the media and stated “We feel really good about where he was running to first base this week and we’ll try to build off that.”

Van Wagenen, who actually negotiated Cespedes’ current four-year, $110M contract, is also responsible for negotiating a major financial cutback on Cespedes’ contract due to his injuries. Something that is normally unheard of and BVW nearly doesn’t get enough credit for doing so.

“He looks great,” said starting pitcher Marcus Stroman. “He looks like he’s getting healthy, he looks like he’s on the progression that he needs to be on. Obviously, he’s a huge weapon. He’s grinding extremely hard every single day in the weight room, in the training room, doing everything that needs to be done. I love seeing that and I’m hoping that he does everything he can so he can be out there with us helping us Opening Day.”

“We’ve been very pleased with where he is offensively,” BVW said. “He’s been working hard on his running progression and we’re going to continue to build that up … We’ll continue to look forward to each day as a new step.”