Wheeler Injury Bad News for Mets, But Not A Huge Surprise

Zack Wheeler (Mark Duncan/Associated Press)

OK, Mets followers, when Sandy Alderson said on Friday that Zack Wheeler’s elbow soreness was nothing to be concerned about, raise your hands if you believed him.

Not many hands should go up, even as talented arms go down in Mets camp.

Less than 24 hours after the Mets’ general manager issued his Baghdad Bob claim of no concern, Wheeler was undergoing an MRI on his elbow.

And, on the same weekend, the Mets revealed that lefty reliever Josh Edgin would be lost for 2015 after he undergoes Tommy John surgery.

Then, when Sunday’s radio broadcast of the Mets’ spring training game against Tampa Bay came and went without any word on Wheeler’s MRI, one had to figure that no news was bad news. Had the MRI come back with something encouraging, the Mets PR department would have gone into overdrive to publicize the good news.

Instead, on Monday morning, the team released this statement:

“Based on an MRI taken Saturday in Port St. Lucie and reviewed this morning at the Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) in New York, RHP Zack Wheeler has been preliminarily diagnosed with a torn ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) in the right elbow.  Wheeler will travel to New York today to confirm the diagnosis and discuss next steps with Dr. David Altchek at HSS.”

The truth is, for many, as soon as Matt Harvey’s elbow injury was revealed in August 2013, it meant that Zack Wheeler was on the clock. Wheeler made it through a solid if unspectacular sophomore season in 2014 without any publicized injuries (although he apparently did struggle with some unpublicized elbow discomfort), but with young, hard-throwing pitchers who have heavy workloads and who have not yet had a significant elbow or shoulder injury, it is always just a matter of time.

With Wheeler’s status looking very dire for 2015, the Mets need to hold on tight to veteran insurance policy Dillon Gee, who might just save the rotation.

Meanwhile, Noah Syndergaard, we hate to say it, but now, you are on the clock.