Ike Davis has Valley Fever

It has begun — the Mets have not even played an exhibition game yet and they are already dealing with player ailments, and either misdiagnosing things or not being totally honest about them. Sound familiar?

ESPNNewYork.com reports that Ike Davis may be suffering from something called Valley Fever, which is a fungal infection found in desert regions in the Southwest. Davis spends his off-season in Phoenix.

“Because I haven’t got the blood work back I can’t be sure it’s true,” Davis texted the website on Saturday.

“We’re treating him as if that’s what it is,” Terry Collins told Mets.com. “We can’t let him run down. That’s what we’ve been told. We’ll give him some days off. He says he can go, and he’s been doing everything he’s supposed to. But we need to be sure he doesn’t push it.”

Valley Fever is treated with drugs and rest; apparently a lot of rest — ESPN reports that Conor Jackson played just 30 games for the Diamondbacks in 2009 while recovering from it. That would doom the Mets season, just like Davis’s injury (which of course was not serious at first) wrecked 2011.

Davis was sent back to New York this week to get tested for what the Mets called a harmless lung infection. We have seen this far too often from this team — the Mets downplaying an injury that turns out to be far more serious than they first let on. I don’t think the Mets are doing this maliciously — perhaps they continue to visit incompetent doctors. Either way, something has got to change with their medical team.