Matt Harvey sidelined with shoulder injury as his disastrous season continues

Matt Harvey’s season has been a tremendous disappointment thus far, so what’s one more bit of bad news? The erstwhile New York Mets ace has added another injury to the list that’s made him a shell of his former self.

The Mets announced Thursday that Harvey has a stress injury to the scapula bone in the right shoulder and that he’s going on the disabled list and “expected to miss several weeks.” This comes a night after Harvey’s fastball dipped to as slow as 87 mph and caused Harvey to tell reporters, “My arm was not working at all.”

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Since his breakout season in 2013, Harvey has needed Tommy John surgery and surgery to relieve thoracic outlet syndrome, which caused pain in his right shoulder last season. While both Harvey and the Mets knew he’d have to be patient while seeing if his velocity returned, Wednesday night’s performance was a clue that something was obviously wrong.

Harvey gave up four runs in four innings — and three homers — but the Mets eventually won 9-4 after a five-run eighth inning. They had to know they were going to lose Harvey, though. After the game, the team said it would be sending him to see an arm doctor.

The drama of 2017 for Harvey has been about more than the radar gun. He famously missed a game earlier this season and was suspended by the team. Eventually, tabloid reports indicated that Harvey was out late partying the night before and had been distraught over his crumbled relationship with model-girlfriend Adriana Lima.

All the while, Harvey has mostly struggled on the mound. His ERA is 5.25. He hasn’t pitched more than six innings since mid-April. And he’s given up 16 homers, which tie him for ninth-most in MLB.

It’s not like Harvey is the only problem the Mets have either. Ace Noah Syndergaard is still on the disabled list with a partial lat tear and won’t even start throwing for another four weeks, the Mets said on Thursday after he was re-examined. They also put Neil Walker on the disabled list on Thursday with a partial tear of his left hamstring.

This isn’t where the Mets, a team with World Series aspirations, thought it would be in mid-June. They have a 30-34 record, which is good enough for second place in the NL East, but they’re still 8.5 back from the Washington Nationals.

Losing Harvey at this point — as meh as he’s been this season — isn’t likely to swing the Mets’ season one way or another. But it will lead to even more questions about the long-term viability of Harvey, whose once promising career is now stuck in neutral thanks to disappointment after disappointment.

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Mike Oz is the editor of Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at mikeozstew@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz