MLB PLAYER NEWS

Wheeler injury another tough one for Mets

The Sports Xchange

March 17, 2015 at 8:31 pm.

Wheeler is all but certain to undergo season-ending Tommy John surgery. Brad Barr-USA TODAY Sports

Luck of the Irish?

Has to be better than the luck of the New York Mets.

A spring training that began with optimism took another sour turn for the Mets on Monday, when right-handed pitcher Zack Wheeler was diagnosed with a complete tear of the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow. While he is expected to seek a second opinion, Wheeler is all but certain to undergo season-ending Tommy John surgery.

The one area in which the penny-pinching Mets are fortified with depth is starting pitching, so there will be no shortage of candidates to replace Wheeler. Right-hander Dillon Gee, who was being prepped for bullpen duty because he had been squeezed out of the rotation following the return of right-hander Matt Harvey from his own Tommy John surgery, is expected to resume starting. In addition, a pair of promising prospects — right-hander Noah Syndergaard and left-hander Steven Matz — will likely be ready for promotions by midseason.

Still, the loss of Wheeler — who showed signs of emerging as an ace-caliber pitcher during the second half of last season — is a big psychological blow for a team that expected to contend for a playoff berth behind the hard-throwing right-handed trio of Wheeler, Matt Harvey and reigning National League Rookie of the Year Jacob deGrom.

“It’s a tough day for all of us,” Harvey said Monday after throwing four shutout innings against the Boston Red Sox.

The Mets came under immediate criticism for not only initially underplaying Wheeler’s injury but for apparently letting Wheeler pitch through pain last season.

Wheeler was torched in his lone Grapefruit League start March 9, when he gave up six runs in 1 2/3 innings against the Miami Marlins. He was scheduled to pitch again March 14, but the Mets announced the day before — Friday the 13th — that he’d been scratched due to a tender elbow and a blister on his right middle finger.

General manager Sandy Alderson admitted March 13 that Wheeler had elbow issues last season, when he threw at least 100 pitches 24 times in 32 starts and exceeded 100 pitches in 15 of his final 16 starts. He threw 99 pitches in his other start.

Alderson also said Wheeler underwent a pair of MRIs over the winter, but that the team wasn’t worried about him and that he wouldn’t be subjected to another test.

“He had it looked at in the offseason,” Alderson said. “This is something he experienced a little bit during the course of last season as well. It was managed. That’s what we expect this season.”

On March 14, though, the Mets announced they would administer another MRI to Wheeler.

“We’ll see how the results are,” manager Terry Collins said March 14. “He had two this winter. They were clean as heck, so we don’t expect any damage. A little rest won’t hurt.”

Two days later, the Mets found out there was plenty of damage, and that Wheeler will get at least a year’s worth of rest.

On March 17, Alderson chafed at the criticism the Mets had absorbed, saying the team handled Wheeler last season the same way they would anyone else.

A day earlier, he was more resigned to yet another Mets pitcher going under the knife. Wheeler will be the fifth Mets pitcher to undergo Tommy John surgery since the fall of 2013, following in the footsteps of Harvey, right-handers Jeremy Hefner and Bobby Parnell and left-hander Josh Edgin, who had the operation March 15.

“The diagnosis is not surprising,” Alderson said, “We had been forewarned by the doctors that his elbow was a concern, and that it was going to have to be managed over the course of the season. It wasn’t clear that the ligament was involved at that time, but we understood that we were going to have to manage his medical condition over the course of the season.

“When the elbow is involved, anything can happen.”