Jason Vargas has fracture in glove hand

The Mets announced this morning that starting pitcher Jason Vargas, who was recently hit on the glove hand by a line drive, has a non-displaced fracture of the hamate bone in that hand. The lefty will see a hand specialist today, and the team has not yet provided an estimate for how long he might be out.

If Vargas can play through the injury, it obviously won’t affect things much as far as the team’s starting rotation goes. If not, the Mets might finally end up getting their first-ever turn through the rotation that features Noah Syndergaard, Jacob deGrom, Matt Harvey, Steven Matz, and Zack Wheeler. There’s been a bit of a competition for the final spot in the rotation between Matz and Wheeler.

Whether or not that once-dreamed-about five-man rotation is the best thing the Mets could have right now is, at the very least, debatable. While Vargas wasn’t an incredibly exciting addition, he unquestionably had the best 2017 season of the non-Syndergaard/deGrom contingent of current Mets pitchers.