It seems Matt Harvey has a partially torn UCL. Shannon posted about the UCL itself earlier. Go read it if you need a quick update about what it does.
Last season I defended Terry Collins’ decision to leave Santana on for his no hitter against Shannon. He thinks that contributed to Johan being done for this year. I still think he hurt himself trying to play with a lower body injury. But in this case with Harvey, damn. What’s going on with the team doctors, front office, and training staff? It seems the Mets lose a lot of players to injuries.
And, I have to agree with Shannon about leaving Collins out there as a lame duck manager, making moves as of he is fighting for his job. I also think the front office/owners might have kept pushing Harvey out there because they knew fans show up to the games he is pitching (pure opinion on my part).
Matt Harvey underwent an MRI today that revealed a partial tear of the ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow, which will likely force him to end his season by going on the disabled list.
3:47 pm: The team will determine if Harvey needs Tommy John surgery at a later date (Rosenthal, FOX Sports).
3:45 pm: Harvey has a partial tear of the ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow and he will be put on the disabled list (Francesa, WFAN) Rubin, ESPN NY). Sports)
Great. Hey Mets, how does this work into the narrative now? You guys better come up with an amazing back up plan to whatever plan you had for 2014. I have a feeling if you guys don’t do something big this offseason there is going to be a lot and I mean a lot of discontent amongst the fans.
Ugh. I can’t wait to see what Mr.Shark is going to have to say about this.
Matt Harvey just went to address the media.
From Adam Rubin
Harvey: “Obviously it was the last thing I was kind of expecting when I went in this morning. I haven’t had shooting pain … at all.”
Harvey said he was only dealing with forearm tightness recently. It got more uncomfortable after his last start.
Matt Harvey says it’s tough to pinpoint when forearm tightness began, but he had been getting treatment and felt like he could pitch thru it
Matt Harvey said it had been a month or two that he had been dealing with the forearm tightness, but did not believe it was serious.
From Evan Roberts
So both Matt Harvey and Sandy Alderson have contradicted Terry Collins on the forearm soreness issue
From Kevin Burkhardt
Harvey says he will do whatever he can to avoid surgery. Not sure yet if he will get a 2nd opinion.
Trying really hard not to point fingers, as it’s only been the past two starts in which he said he’s been pretty tired, but I just read on Twitter Sandy said they’ve known about “forearm issues” for a while, but there was never any indication there was a tear. But if there were “issues,” why wonder? Why not do an MRI? Why not shut him down in a meaningless season? You want a few extra thousand fannies in the seat every five days, sure, I get it, but at what price?
I hope we haven’t seen the best of Matt Harvey. I mean, it’s been a heck of a good “best.” But I expected it to last for so much longer.
I also don’t understand why they haven’t taken a precautionary MRI before this. This stinks to high heaven. I would fire a lot of people starting with Dan Warthen.
I’d love to kill them for this but the charge would be groundless as its still August and they didn’t run him out there for another start after he said he was tired. This is just “Mets Luck”, which is truly a shame as Harvey often seemed to be above the cloud that hangs over that franchise. There is always a key injury, Ponzi scheme or lingering prohibitive contract(s) that keep them set on a perpetual pace for 70-75 wins a year.
It’s hard to hammer the team without knowing more details. We don’t know if the forearm thing is even related (it very well could be–the soreness being a result of the muscles compensating for the weakened ligament–but we don’t know; it’s not even been specified which side of the forearm was sore). Even Harvey doesn’t know when the injury happened. I’ve dealt with this stuff for a living for going on 2 decades, and more often than not, there’s no more warning that a UCL injury is coming than there is that someone is going to tear their ACL, so until there’s evidence to the contrary, I’m not inclined to assume anything was mishandled.
The Nationals went through this same thing with Strasburg, so it’s not a Mets-specific thing by any stretch. If a method existed to give every pitcher a 15-year career with no time on the DL, someone would’ve long ago made a mint on it. As Gary, Keith, and Ron were discussing earlier during the game, all these precautions are being taken throughout baseball to prevent pitchers’ injuries, yet the injuries aren’t going away, so just how efficacious can you say the precautions are?
If you subscribe to the theory of pitch counts and innings limits extending careers (It’s been hypothesized–but not proven by any stretch– that Nolan Ryan’s longevity was aided by the wildness of his youth and getting yanked from games early), something you can’t ignore is the level of stress these elite guys have been subjected to before they even sign their first professional contract. If you truly only get “x” number of pitches in your lifetime, then the way your high school and college teams leaned on you so heavily could be leaving your MLB club hosed before you even get your first invitation to Spring Training.
All that said, the simple truth is many injuries (elbow injuries in particular) very often happen with no rhyme, reason, or warning. Like I said in a comment to an earlier post, if 2 runs and no walks in 6 2/3 is what happens when a pitcher is tired, we should be so lucky to have the whole rotation as fatigued. Harvey’s UCL wasn’t ever going to un-tear. If he does need surgery, I’m glad we at least got to see him start the All-Start Game in CitiField first.