I don’t like Stroman but I don’t think he faked an injury of manipulated anything. This could very well be about being cautious about making an injury worse ahead of free agency. But apparently he threw 5 innings in a sim game. So he was ready to go and made this decision. Seems to me if the injury was worse than it is he could have milked it and still got paid. The opt out means the Mets were planning to activate him and he either didn’t want to pitch or the Covid concerns are legit. I’m going with the latter.