Matt Harvey Injury: Questions and doubts remain for Mets

Matt Harvey has a partial tear of the ulnar collateral ligament in his pitching elbow.

Matt Harvey is done for the season.

Matt Harvey may require Tommy John surgery.

Matt Harvey could miss most or all of 2014.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

All work and no play makes Jack a asfdl&$Q#*^

Not sure if you've heard, but the Mets' right-handed stud of a horse of an ace has a partial tear of a ligament in his elbow. He's done for the rest of the season and may well require Tommy John surgery, which customarily carries at minimum a ten month recovery period for human men. Up until a few hours ago I wasn't sure that applied to Harvey, but apparently it does.

Despite the rapid reaction on Twitter and elsewhere, let's remember that the Mets are not cursed because #TINSTAAPP. As with every team that relies on humans to do inhuman things with fragile muscles, disaster can strike at any moment.

No, the Mets aren't the victims of a mythical curse, but that doesn't mean they're without temporal problems. And while finger pointing is of little use, so is continuing to ignore what could be serious issues.

To the team's credit, Harvey's innings were appropriately limited this season and even recently he's still been pitching well and lighting up the radar gun. On the surface it was hard to see that there was something seriously wrong, but there was.

Harvey said he has felt discomfort in his forearm for the past two months. At this point it's unclear if that was communicated to the training staff, but if so, given Harvey's absolute necessity to the future of the organization and his tendency to "tough it out," it is more than troubling that he was only sent for an MRI today. That scenario would have to be the last straw for head trainer Ray Ramirez, who has been with the club since 2004 and has a checkered history of treating mild strains with what I have to assume to be regular exposure to something akin to gangrene, given the Mets' record with nagging injuries. If the pain wasn't communicated then that breakdown of communication reflects poorly on the organization's culture, which was supposed to be in better order under GM Sandy Alderson.

Regardless, Alderson has done an admirable job stockpiling talent and positioning the team to win for the long term. In a way that success makes this news sting all the more, because now the 2014 season, which had looked like the year the Mets would return to serious contention, is in doubt. The team's presumed offseason plans to trade from a surplus of young power pitching is in doubt. And if the target year is pushed back until 2015, the tested patience of a long-suffering fan base is in doubt.

The Mets are not cursed. When you look at the list of pitchers who have undergone Tommy John, they aren't even especially unlucky.

But I don't care.

This team, which has been the butt of jokes off and on for nearly a generation, was almost all the way back, and almost there the right way. We could see it coming, picture what it was going to be like. And while I fully expect Harvey to come back from this as strong as ever, I don't know if, as a fan, I can. it's just getting hard to keep writing off seasons. Now wait till next year is wait till two years. And after next year, who knows?

After three-quarters of a season full of certain promise, all that's left are questions and doubts.