Not long after declaring Steven Matz ready to go for Friday’s start, the tables have turned, as the Mets have scratched the left-hander due to lingering discomfort in his left shoulder, per Joel Sherman of the New York Post (links to Sherman on Twitter). Furthermore, general manager Sandy Alderson stated that with so few games remaining on the schedule, it’s unlikely that Matz will be able to take the hill for another regular season start, per Sherman.
It’s now been nearly six weeks since Matz took the mound on Aug. 14, making it difficult to envision a scenario where he’d be able to ramp back up in time to make any kind of impact on the Mets’ postseason roster — if the Mets are able to hang on in the National League Wild Card race. The flare-up in Matz’s shoulder means that the Mets will be without him, Jacob deGrom (elbow surgery) and Matt Harvey (thoracic outlet syndrome surgery) in the event that the team reaches the postseason. Right-hander Gabriel Ynoa is set to step into Matz’s spot in the rotation tomorrow, but the postseason rotation, if necessary, would now seemingly consist of Noah Syndergaard, Bartolo Colon and one of Seth Lugo, Robert Gsellman or Ynoa. Of that bunch, Lugo has been the most effective and would represent the leading candidate to join the rotation in a theoretical NLDS appearance.
Alderson indicated to Sherman that surgery doesn’t appear to be necessary on Matz’s shoulder, though it’s been a foregone conclusion for months that he’ll need to go under the knife in order to remove a bone spur from his left elbow following the season. If, as Alderson indicated, this ends the season for Matz, the 25-year-old southpaw will finish with a 3.40 ERA, 8.8 K/9 and 2.1 BB/9 in 132 1/3 innings. Certainly, he’ll hope to be able to take on a greater workload in 2017, though concerns about Matz’s durability are nothing new. The 141 innings he threw between the minors and Majors last season represent a career-high for Matz.
That’s really disappointing for myself along with other Mets fans. He is part of the “best rotation in baseball” Until next year Steven
What a joke. This franchise does nothing right! Next thing you know they’ll be letting Cespedes walk and taking Bruce’s option for 2017!!!
You’re saying that it’s the Mets fault the guy is injured? Interesting perspective.
Yes. Minor league strength and conditioning has be absolutely poor over the last decade and someone finally paid the price.
It’s interesting the team getting the most of a former Mets pitching prospect deep in 2016 looks to be the Tigers (Michael Fulmer). I don’t want to even think about if they don’t make the playoffs and Cespedes leaves via FA. Would that WS play in 2015 be worth it?
Yes. Definitely worth it.
It just gets easier and easier for the Cubs to break their embarrassing championship dry spell, and they’ll still find a way to screw it up.
Still have to beat an American League team. Likely going to be Boston playing the Cubs in the WS. Then again, this is baseball and just 2 years ago , the WS was 2 wildcard teams.
I don’t know if you have seen that lineup. But it sure looks like the cubs are an American league team. ..
The Cubs were 15-5 against AL teams this year. I’m not particularly worried.
Well in that case let’s just go ahead and call off the playoffs now and hand them the Commissioner’s Trophy. Save everyone the embarrassment of losing to the Cubs dynasty.
This is ridiculous…
The team has never had luck. No ones fault but gone uniform.
But the uniform
Super disappointing. From the “big 5,” 4 have gone down with significant injuries. Worst of all, there will be questions about all of them when Spring Training rolls around. It is not like these injuries are the kinds that just “go away” and/or have to hope surgery has fixed problems they should have. The visions of an unbeatable rotation are very tenuous. Parallels to the Prior/Wood era Cubs are valid at this point. Keeping my fingers crossed that these guys get right for the future. What a shame it would be to not see that rotation strut its stuff for a couple years at least. This would be like seeing Bryant/Russell/Rizzo/Schwarber or Betts/Bradley/Boegarts/Benintendi go down together. Baseball fans deserve to see these guys play together.
Well…. us Angels fans might want to say something about that… Richards, Heaney, Tropeano, C.J. Wilson out since last year. Can I include Shoemaker? I feel your pain brotha. We can just hope they get better. It would be awesome to see the Mets pitching core be healthy to see what they can do moving forward.
Just when you think you can be relieved about an injury situation… But I will stay true to my screen name and say, hey, look at where we are despite the insane number of injuries suffered this year.
The Dodgers man, only pitcher that has been healthy all year is Maeda. We are just lucky that they are all getting healthy at the right time. (Knock on wood)
Kind of ironic – a rookie who took a hugely incentive-laden deal due to medical issues, is the only guy in that rotation who hasn’t gone down.
Alex Wood?
It’s also kind of ironic how they voided iwakumas deal because of Medicals but I don’t think he has been hurt at all
It would’ve been a really fun match up again to see mets vs Cubs at full strength again but oh well