It feels like it’s all coming crashing down, doesn’t it? Well maybe not quite yet, but it sure seems that the specter of the injury-riddled 2009 team is on a train barreling toward us at an increasingly rapid pace. Forgetting for a moment the injuries to and underperformance of the offense, the team’s path to a championship was always through the rotation. That rotation is currently teetering on the edge of disaster. Is that overdramatic? Not when we consider the full scope of what’s going on in Metsland at the moment.
Matt Harvey has elected to have season-ending surgery to address the thoracic outlet syndrome he’s apparently been facing all season. This is good news and bad news. It’s obviously a huge blow to 2016 in that they’re losing him for the rest of the year. Even in his diminished form, he accumulated 2.0 fWAR in about half a season. While that’s not quite what we fans hoped to see, that pace wouldn’t have put him too far off most projections. The positive spin on this is that there was something physically wrong with Harvey that can theoretically be fixed instead of some nebulous “hangover” effect from 2015.
It was reported last week that Steven Matz and Noah Syndergaard both have bone spurs in their elbows. Bone spurs are not uncommon, many pitchers just pitch through the pain and discomfort with surgery after the season, and there is currently no reported concern over additional damage. Matz’s spur has been described as “not small,” and there is concern that his performance may be so impacted that surgery during the season may be unavoidable. Like Harvey, Matz has thus far contributed a 2.0 fWAR. Unlike Harvey, that puts him on pace to surpass most projections. He was certainly coming into his own and living up to the expectations Mets fans had for him.
Syndergaard broke out in a big way this season and firmly established himself as one of the best pitchers in the game. You don’t need me to recount how awesome he’s truly been, but his 4.0 fWAR so far is on pace to blow away projections. It’s also third-highest for a starting pitcher, behind only Clayton Kershaw and Jose Fernandez. His bone spur was less concerning than Matz’s considering his performance didn’t appear to be impacted by it. That all changed last night, however, when he left the game with what the team has labeled arm fatigue. His velocity was as low as 91 MPH. The claim that he’s just fatigued from an increase in workload in his first full season is certainly a strong possibility, if not likely. Still, any arm trouble is concerning, and Syndergaard has recently shown to not be so upfront with the media on arm issues.
Zack Wheeler, the expected mid-season cavalry, has experienced several setbacks in his recovery from Tommy John surgery and is still at least a month away. At the start of the season his addition to the rotation was more of a rich getting richer situation, whereas now it may be absolutely vital. Will he face another setback? Are the Mets simply being cautious with his repaired elbow or should we be more concerned? Depending on how things go with Syndergaard and Matz, Wheeler’s return may be the most important addition the team could possibly make near the deadline.
At the beginning of the season there was hope that the “Fab Five” would finally see a full turn together in the Mets’ rotation. That’s not going to happen this season, and things may only get worse. Not to be a doomsayer, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility that four of the five could be on the shelf in September. That’d be the darkest timeline, of course, but one that’s frighteningly close to possible.
Remember when our biggest concern about the rotation was Jacob deGrom‘s velocity? Seems ridiculous now considering he may end up headlining a rotation with Gabriel Ynoa, Logan Verrett, and Sean Gilmartin heading into the stretch.
We’re obviously getting ahead of ourselves here, and fingers are crossed for the health of the remaining members of the rotation. The infamous words of Mets owner Fred Wilpon a few years ago echo how Mets fans tend to feel when things seem to be spiraling out of control, though. We just may be snakebitten, baby.
Our starting pitcher rep in the All Star Game is Bartolo Colon. That tells it all.
It still doesn’t feel as bad to me as 2009.
I guess because it’s been a lot of conjecture about injuries, compared to a lot of DL stints. If Syndergaard and Cespedes go on the DL now and Matz in two week, then it will feel like ’09.