Harvey to undergo season-ending surgery
Ever since spring training, Matt Harvey hasn't had sensation in his fingertips.
On Friday the New York Mets right-hander elected to undergo surgery to address his thoracic outlet syndrome, according to his agent Scott Boras, effectively ending his season.
Although he could've had a temporary fix to carry him through the campaign, Boras said they were always leaning toward surgery in order to get him ready for next year.
"The doctors clearly recommended that he have this done, mainly so that he can be ready for '17," Boras said. "The rehab on this is six months. Now, if there was a small window of a season, you might be able to take a shot. It's actually Botox, which relaxes the muscles. That's not a long-term solution."
Harvey was placed on the 15-day disabled list earlier this week, and shortly after it was found he has TOS, which is a compression of nerves and blood vessels in the shoulder area that's often fixed by the removal of a rib in the patient.
On Thursday, Mets manager Terry Collins relayed an alarming message from Harvey after he came out from his start Monday, which almost instantly raised red flags.
"My shoulder's dead. My arm's dead," Harvey told Collins. "There's no energy there. I couldn't feel the ball."
There's no doubt the issue has contributed to Harvey's atrocious numbers. This season he was 4-10 with a 4.86 ERA, striking out 76 while surrendering 25 walks. Boras said he's glad they pinpointed what exactly was wrong with him in order to mitigate any further injury.
"He just didn't feel he had the command and feeling," the agent said. "He just didn't really feel he was himself mechanically. He couldn't stay behind the ball. He felt strong body-wise, but just something was there.
"He's felt this way since spring training, but he wanted to gut it out, try to do it, until finally he's going, 'Look, I'm just feeling like I don't feel the baseball the same,'" Boras added. "Once we heard that, I was like, 'Maybe we have a TOS situation,' and got him over to Dr. Thompson."
Minnesota Twins right-hander Phil Hughes underwent the procedure earlier this week, while Chris Carpenter, Jaime Garcia, and Chris Young also had it done before.
Boras made it clear he wasn't impressed by the Mets throwing Harvey for 216 innings last season - the most an MLB pitcher has ever thrown a year after coming off Tommy John surgery.
Without speculating, Boras said there's no definitive link between his client's innings count and injury.
"When you're talking about a nerve impingement, muscularity, that kind of thing, I'm not sure you can draw conclusions one way or the other," he said. "I can't draw any conclusions other than we were fine in '15 and felt this in '16."