It’s so eerily similar: An ace who took a New York team and the town by storm suddenly gets the gut-churning news he is suffering from a partial tear of the ulnar collateral ligament.
The Mets’ Matt Harvey knows exactly what the Yankees’ Masahiro Tanaka is feeling. He got that news late last August, the same type of news Tanaka heard Thursday.
But that’s where the similarity ends. While Tanaka’s prognosis seems to point to rest and rehab and a possible return to throwing in six weeks, Harvey, after weighing all options, elected for surgery Oct. 22.
“Everyone’s different,” Harvey said Thursday following the Mets’ 3-1 loss to the Braves at Citi Field. “No one is saying that he can’t rehab and be completely fine and never have an issue. For me personally, it was a mental thing and something I didn’t want to continue thinking about.”
Harvey recalled how he felt no issues with his elbow and that all sensations dealt “more forearm in the lower area, closer to the hand.” Several days after the diagnosis, Harvey felt he could throw. But eventually, caution — and common sense — won out.
So while he has not spoken to the Yankees’ star righty, Harvey would tell him to go with his gut.
“I would tell him just go with what you feel. I didn’t listen to anybody. I went off my personal feelings,” Harvey said. “It’s your body that you want to throw with again, obviously, and if you want to go out and try not to have it [surgery] and your mindset is to that and you’re 100 percent committed to that, then more power to you.
“And if it’s the other way around, go get it done,” Harvey said. “For me it took a while, obviously, and I went south to have surgery.”
So much went into the decision, Harvey said. The thought of sitting out a year — after having pitched the equivalent of one full season over 2012 and 2013 — flat out stung. But no regrets. Harvey went with his gut and his decision was fueled by good old-fashioned fear that the longer he went without surgery, every day could be the day his elbow blew out.
“It was something I felt I could work past and battle through and figure out an alternative to obviously going down and having surgery,” Harvey said. “But waking up every morning and getting to the point [wondering] if I was going to pick up a baseball again, when was it going to completely go.”
And it got to be too much.
“After waking up so many days of the same mindset of, ‘When’s it going to be? When’s this going to happen?,’ at that point I’d had enough and went down to Florida and had surgery,” Harvey said.
“After not throwing for a couple days, everything felt fine,” Harvey said of the initial days after the news. “But for me, it was a mental thing, something I felt would kind of linger in the back of my mind going forward.
“Trying to work through it is a personal decision. Having surgery is a personal decision. You always think about in the future. … For me, for the organization as we’re building, it seemed like a good time to get it done and put it behind me.”