Wheeler: Torn Ligament, Tommy John Surgery Likely

[batmagadanleadoff]

Wheeler's injury could plausibly cause the Mets other domino effect problems, besides his lost innings. This setback likely requires the Mets to carry Gee's salary, something that many suspect was not in the Mets plans. If the Mets were planning on dumping Gee's salary, they might no longer be able to do so. If the Mets are as financially strapped as their harshest critics and biggest skeptics believe they are, carrying Gee's salary might impinge on their "supposed" plans to increase the payroll depending on their W-L record later on in the season.

Again, this all depends on how broke the Mets are, and how much wiggle room they truly have with respect to their payroll, or as Sandy likes to say: how much "payroll flexibility" they truly have.

[Ceetar]

batmagadanleadoff wrote: Wheeler's injury could plausibly cause the Mets other domino effect problems, besides his lost innings. This setback likely requires the Mets to carry Gee's salary, something that many suspect was not in the Mets plans. If the Mets were planning on dumping Gee's salary, they might no longer be able to do so. If the Mets are as financially strapped as their harshest critics and biggest skeptics believe they are, carrying Gee's salary might impinge on their "supposed" plans to increase the payroll depending on their W-L record later on in the season. Again, this all depends on how broke the Mets are, and how much wiggle room they truly have with respect to their payroll, or as Sandy likes to say: how much "payroll flexibility" they truly have.

except they have Syndergaard, Montero, Matz, etc. If they desperately needed to dump Gee he'd be gone already.

[Lefty Specialist]

You know, I'd be comfortable with Montero as the 5th starter. Unless somebody else's arm is about to fall off (cough, Niese, cough) and they haven't told us.

[MFS62]

Lefty Specialist wrote: You know, I'd be comfortable with Montero as the 5th starter.

I agree. But I'm guessing that TC would rather go with a proven veteran. Its "the book".

Later

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Yeah, but it's literally the difference-maker between the two. As a control pitcher with unimpressive "stuff" who pounds the zone relentlessly and has been weirdly good (considering) at avoiding home-run-age, Montero is essentially Gee, minus the experience.

Thing is, though... with his ace-through-batter-18 stat profile, Gee has seemed a natural for the pen move this year. Ripples, man.

[MFS62]

zips projections:

Wheeler: 175 IP - 8.81 K/9 - 3.43 BB/9 - 0.77 HR/9 - 3.48 ERA - 3.58 FIP Montero: 144 IP - 8.65 K/9 - 3.11 BB/9 - 0.87 HR/9 - 3.61 ERA - 3.63 FIP Gee: 142 IP - 6.78 K/9 - 2.54 BB/9 - 1.14 HR/9 - 4.18 ERA - 4.24 FIP

They project Montero closer to Wheeler than what Gee would provide.

Later

[Edgy MD]

I certainly don't think it's the book to go with Gee. I do think it makes good business sense to give an opportunity to the established guy who has no options and challenge the younger player to figure things out and take the job from him outright.

I'm certainly rooting for Montero. But it's a good problem to have, as much as losing Wheeler is a bad problem to have.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: Ripples, man.

Yes and yes. That's where it hurts.

[Edgy MD]

Frayed Knot wrote: We should just start referring to those Mets who have NOT had TJ surgery as 'The Unsullied'. 'Game of Thrones' reference for those unfamiliar

I'm counting, out of 31 guys in camp, seven (or 22.6%) to be "sullied" by Tommy John surgery, and another six (19.4%) to be marked by pitching-related surgeries of a different stripe.

Those would actually look like pretty successful numbers, from a pure data standpoint, if the list of marked men didn't skew extremely toward the highest profile pitchers they have.

The Sullied	The Unsullied	But�
Jacob deGrom	Dario �lvarez	Nada!
Josh Edgin (to come)	Vic Black	But nothin'!
Matt Harvey	Matt Bowman	A healthy arm, and his mom's a doctor!
Steven Matz	Chasen Bradford	Got knocked out of camp with an oblique injury last year, but no surgery!
Jenrry Mejia	Buddy Carlyle	A miracle!
Bobby Parnell	Bartolo Colon	He has had bone chip removal surgery.
Zach Wheeler (to come)	Jeurys Familia	Had arthroscpic surgery to remove bone spurs and "loose bodies."
	Dillon Gee	Had surgery to remove a blood clot in his shoulder.
	Sean Gilmartin	A true blue spectacle!
	Eric Goeddel	Clean!
	Jack Leathersich	A good candidate for gastrointestinal surgery, but otherwise clean!
	Cory Mazzoni	Suffered a bad impact injury on a comebacker last year, but no surgery!
	Rafael Montero	He's a clean machine!
	Akeel Morris	No scars!
	Jon Niese	He has had surgery to repair a hamstring tear.
	Scott Rice	Bone spurs.
	Tyler Pill	A former outfielder, his arm is still relatively fresh!
	Hansel Robles	No Jeff Walters, he!
	Cody Satterwhite	Shoulder surgery back in 2010.
	Noah Syndergaard	Knock a whole lot of wood!
	Zack Thornton	An enigmatic, but clean, character!
	Carlos Torres	Nothin' but blisters!
	Jon Velasquez	An indy ball survivor, but no record of surgery that I've found!
	Gabriel Ynoa	He's got the elbow of a newborn baby!

[Frayed Knot]

Don't think Matz had TJ procedures, just had complications and other problems which led to an ultra-long recovery period.
Hefner's the guy whose first TJ 'didn't take'.

[Edgy MD]

You're correct. One Tommy John plus complications.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Ceetar wrote: Wheeler's injury could plausibly cause the Mets other domino effect problems, besides his lost innings. This setback likely requires the Mets to carry Gee's salary, something that many suspect was not in the Mets plans. If the Mets were planning on dumping Gee's salary, they might no longer be able to do so. If the Mets are as financially strapped as their harshest critics and biggest skeptics believe they are, carrying Gee's salary might impinge on their "supposed" plans to increase the payroll depending on their W-L record later on in the season. Again, this all depends on how broke the Mets are, and how much wiggle room they truly have with respect to their payroll, or as Sandy likes to say: how much "payroll flexibility" they truly have. except they have Syndergaard, Montero, Matz, etc. If they desperately needed to dump Gee he'd be gone already.

Maybe the Mets are looking to stall their arb clocks. Should fans trust the Mets to believe that their personnel decisions regarding their budding pitchers are not mainly driven by salary concerns?

[duan]

every team makes roster moves on the basis of Free Agency and arbitration. The Chicago Cubs are going to keep Kris Bryant in the minors so that they get another year of team control and nobodies saying that's due to money, it's just playing the standard cost/benefit analysis that any intelligent organisation will do.

[ashie62]

Frayed Knot wrote: Don't think Matz had TJ procedures, just had complications and other problems which led to an ultra-long recovery period. Hefner's the guy whose first TJ 'didn't take'.

I believe Matz had TJ surgery 5/18/2010 and saw Dr Andrews fearing another tear in 2012.

A nice current background piece on Matz.

http://www.northjersey.com/sports/baseball/the-mets-next-big-thing-1.1289403?page=all

[Ceetar]

batmagadanleadoff wrote: Maybe the Mets are looking to stall their arb clocks. Should fans trust the Mets to believe that their personnel decisions regarding their budding pitchers are not mainly driven by salary concerns?

Montero's been up already.

They could have signed any number of major league minimum veteran guys for depth to get 3 starts out of them in April.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Ceetar wrote: batmagadanleadoff wrote: Maybe the Mets are looking to stall their arb clocks. Should fans trust the Mets to believe that their personnel decisions regarding their budding pitchers are not mainly driven by salary concerns? Montero's been up already.

Doesn't service time accrue only when the player's on the 25 man roster?

[Edgy MD]

So, the Mets are scornfully cheap for shopping Gee and scornfully cheap for keeping Gee.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Edgy MD wrote: So, the Mets are scornfully cheap for shopping Gee and scornfully cheap for keeping Gee.

Cheap is cheap.

[ashie62]

batmagadanleadoff wrote: Edgy MD wrote: So, the Mets are scornfully cheap for shopping Gee and scornfully cheap for keeping Gee. Cheap is cheap.

The Mets were being prudent in keeping Gee to use when some starter went down. A starter did go down, just earlier than we expected.

I don't see any argument that includes Gee and cheap in the same sentence.

[Frayed Knot]

batmagadanleadoff wrote: Doesn't service time accrue only when the player's on the 25 man roster?

Yes, for 51 days to be precise for Montero, meaning he has approx 28% of one season (51/182) under his belt.
So, assuming he were to make the club from opening day this season and never again go back down, he'd have 2.28 years of service time at the end of the 2016 season - almost certainly NOT enough to qualify for arbitration. With approx 1/6 of players between 2 & 3 years qualifying, it's those with ~2.7 and up who are the likely candidates. And on the other end, the Mets would have to keep him on the farm for most of this season in order to possibly delay his arb-time an extra year to 2019.

Besides, arbitration is relatively small potatoes anyway. Sure, given the choice of having your rookie reach it three years from now or four, the club would opt for four. But there's no specific cutoff date where you can be sure that would happen and the fact that a player's status depends not just on his own service time but also on that of every other major leaguer who will have greater than two years but less than three in the same year that he does means the math becomes very inexact and tough to project. As with the Montero example above, they'd have to choose to forego him for most of this season in order to gain a possible marginal savings to the 2018 payroll that's based on a whole lotta guesswork.

FA-gency is a different story and also a lot simpler. Players qualify with exactly six years or more so, with the ability to delay whether their supposed prize gets to call his own shots after six years of seven simply be keeping him down on the farm for the first month of the season, clubs take that option nearly 100% of the time.

[batmagadanleadoff]

So, the Mets are scornfully cheap for shopping Gee and scornfully cheap for keeping Gee. Cheap is cheap. The Mets were being prudent in keeping Gee to use when some starter went down. A starter did go down, just earlier than we expected. I don't see any argument that includes Gee and cheap in the same sentence.

Yeah, I was being sarcastic. I agree that if the Mets had legitimate worries about Wheeler's health, it made perfect sense for them to hold onto Gee as an insurance policy. It also made perfect sense for the Mets to keep their concerns about Wheeler to themselves rather than publicizing them, contrary to what Bob Klapisch believes:

excerpt:

But once again, the Mets make it hard to trust them. No one said a word this winter about Wheeler�s chronic pain. Was it because it was time to hustle season tickets? Was it because a potential setback to one of their prized young arms would sabotage the sales pitch? Is that the reason Alderson never pulled the trigger on a trade for Dillon Gee, because he privately feared this day was coming? Shame on Alderson and his bosses, the Wilpons, for their lack of transparency. If Wheeler�s arm was enough of a concern for a PRP shot in November and an unscheduled MRI in January, it should�ve never been kept a secret. And for Alderson to say Monday, �This kind of result was not totally unexpected,� then every Mets fan has a right to ask: Why didn�t you do anything about it?

http://www.northjersey.com/sports/klapisch-mets-paying-for-not-taking-care-of-wheeler-s-arm-1.1290256

Edited March 17, 2015 by Guest

[Ceetar]

wait, what? KlapTrap is wondering why the Mets didn't do something about it? Like they have the magic pill for Tommy John and aren't using it?

[dgwphotography]

Ceetar wrote: wait, what? KlapTrap is wondering why the Mets didn't do something about it? Like they have the magic pill for Tommy John and aren't using it?

Are you always this obtuse, or just purposely being so?

He wants to know the same thing I want to know. Why weren't they more transparent about this?

I don't know about you, but I have a healthy dose of skepticism about everything the Mets do, because the Wilpons have hardly done anything to gain our trust.

[Guest d'Kong76]

I can't see the word obtuse without thinking of
The Shawshank Redemption.

[Ceetar]

dgwphotography wrote: Ceetar wrote: wait, what? KlapTrap is wondering why the Mets didn't do something about it? Like they have the magic pill for Tommy John and aren't using it? Are you always this obtuse, or just purposely being so? He wants to know the same thing I want to know. Why weren't they more transparent about this? I don't know about you, but I have a healthy dose of skepticism about everything the Mets do, because the Wilpons have hardly done anything to gain our trust.

No, he's asking why they didn't do something about it.

Are the Mets now required to put out a press release for every doctor visit of their players? Maybe they give the email addy for their media listserve (and the bloggers please) directly to the doctor to CC when he gets back to them with results.

[dgwphotography]

d'Kong76 wrote: I can't see the word obtuse without thinking of The Shawshank Redemption.

To be honest, I still haven't seen that movie.

[Guest d'Kong76]

No reason to be dishonest!!

[dgwphotography]

Ceetar wrote: No, he's asking why they didn't do something about it.

According to our great GM's quote, they knew about this already. So, why not do something about it in the off-season, instead of pushing him and waiting until now?

[Ceetar]

dgwphotography wrote: Ceetar wrote: No, he's asking why they didn't do something about it. According to our great GM's quote, they knew about this already. So, why not do something about it in the off-season, instead of pushing him and waiting until now?

No.

He didn't have a tear in January. It was only 'expected' because he's a freaking pitcher and his previous MRIs did show weakness.

Unless he's talking about the crock idea of a preventative Tommy John surgery.

[Edgy MD]

I'm not sure what they're supposed to do either. Monitor, evaluate, maybe prescribe exercise. But when you get to spring, and the guy starts throwing in earnest, in game situations, and it goes, it goes.

Presuming guilt and searching for facts to back it up isn't getting us far. Elbows go. Nobody wants them to. Nobody knows quite how to stop it from happening.

The notion that they were hiding results to push season tickets is nutty for any number of reasons.