I'm Not a Doctor

Matt Harvey has a torn ligament in his elbow. Tommy John surgery is the usual avenue to repair such an injury, but since it is only a partial tear, Harvey has decided to try to rehab it, instead of opting for Tommy John surgery.
This totally sucks. And we want to kick ourselves in the asses and say "typical Mets, cursed franchise" and I might agree with that. We have had Tom Seaver who was great. Gooden who was great and derailed his career with drugs, and now Matt Harvey.
Of course the fear is that he will struggle through one or more injury-plagued seasons before needing the surgery anyway, so why not just have it now?
I guess the thinking is that he can strengthen the muscles around the ligament to prevent a tear. And even if a tear is inevitable, maybe putting it off, would allow a couple more good years before Tommy John surgery and maybe lengthen his career at the back end was well.
And since Dr. James Andrews signed off on this, I'm willing to try this approach. The fear of course is that he will rehab and then tear it sometime next season, costing him 2014 and 2015.
There is a strong reason to believe Harvey will never be the same again, but there are also many examples of guys who came back as good or better.
Adam Wainwright and Steven Strasburg both had the operation in 2011. Chris Carpenter had it in 2007 and came back strong for 3 seasons before getting hurt again. AJ Burnett, Anibal Sanchez and Francisco Liriano are other pitcher who have had success post-Tommy John.

Harvey does not seem to be handling the injury, and the scrutiny over his personal medical decision, very well. Here's his curt interview with Dan Patrick.



I'm very familiar with these type of interviews and the arrangement is exactly how Dan Patrick described it. In this case Qualcomm pays Matt Harvey to be its spokesman. Matt Harvey does interviews to promote the product, but the agreement (and usually it's unspoken, as the producer explained) is that the player will do a real interview about all reasonable topics and the last question or two will be about what is being promoted.
Dan Patrick handled it well, Matt Harvey did not. He later apologized on Twitter as he realized his behavior did damage to himself and to Qualcomm.
I'm sure Harvey's image can recover from this, but can his elbow?