Jose Reyes and Daniel Murphy both left Sunday's game against the Braves with different injuries. Both will not be going on the disabled list. Murphy will be out for the rest of the season after suffering a strained medial collateral ligament (MCL) in his left knee. This happened after Jose Constanza stole second base and nailed the leg of Murphy, causing his knee to buckle. Murphy was hitting .320 with 6 home runs and 49 runs batted in on the year. He will be replaced by Ruben Tejada on the roster.

Reyes injured himself running out a ground ball in the first inning of Sunday's game. He was diagnosed with a strained left hamstring and should return sometime this season. On the season he is hitting .336 with 16 triples, 5 home runs, 30 runs batted in, and 34 stolen bases. He will be replaced by Mike Baxter.

NEW YORK – New York Mets first baseman Ike Davis, who has not appeared in a game since May 10 because of a left ankle injury, may require season-ending surgery in three weeks if he is unable to run at that point, general manager Sandy Alderson said.

Davis, who has been wearing a protective boot, was examined Wednesday at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan. An MRI showed cartilage damage in addition to a bone bruise.

Alderson said Davis will now shed the boot to improve blood flow and try to run in three weeks, after giving more time for the cartilage to heal. If he is unable to comfortably run at that point, surgery will follow.

Alderson likened the procedure to microfracture surgery on the knee. That surgery involves making tiny cracks to increase blood flow and stimulate cartilage growth.

I feel pretty bad for not seeing this coming. The stupid injuries and our inability to properly treat them over the past years is atrocious, and yet I sat here like everyone else just assumed it was a sore twisted ankle and Ike would be back in 2-3 weeks. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice and …. I'm just an idiot. 

*In our second installment of the Future Impact series: How does Jason Bay factor into the Mets future?*

(To read the first installment: "Future Impact: Robert Alan Dickey", click here)

• Born (Age): September 20, 1978 (32) (Wiki)
• Current Contract: 4 years, $66M (2010-2013), $17M club option (2014) ($3M buyout) (Cot's Baseball Contracts)
• Season Statistics: 176 PA, .303 OBP, .576 OPS, 41 TB, 44/20 K/BB (Baseball-Reference)

Jason Bay is not a young player. He's 32 years old. He'll be 33 before the season is over. However, he is going to be a part of the Mets future for at least the next 2 seasons, over which they owe him more than $36M. Normally, if a team is paying a player $36M over a 2 year span, that player is going to be one of your biggest contributors. As any Mets fan would tell you, he has been anything but that. In his two years with the Mets he's hit just 8 home runs with a .697 OPS. That's not going to cut it if he hopes to even approach earning his salary. Let's see what he's going to mean to the Mets going forward.

When Omar Minaya decided to give Jason Bay the contract he's under now, Bay was coming off one of the best seasons of his career with the Red Sox. In fact, he was one of the best hitters in baseball that season. He hit 36 home runs while posting a .921 OPS. To put that in perspective, if that was his current OPS he'd be ranked 7th in the category in the NL. That's the type of production the Mets expected when they signed Bay. That is not who Bay has been for the Mets. He really hasn't been much better than the random players they would throw out in left field before they signed him. 

So what are the chances that Bay can be productive for the Mets over the next 2+ seasons he has left on his current contract? It's incredibly hard to tell. It's not often that major league sluggers fall off a cliff quite like Bay has done. Whether it has something to do with Citi field's dimensions, or the incredible amount of money he makes now making him a bit less aggressive as far as keeping his production, I'm not sure. There are plenty of holes in any of the arguments being thrown around. Whatever it is, I don't really know what to think about Bay going forward. But I do know this. Don't expect the Mets to be able to trade him. With all of the money he's making no team is going to take him off their hands without a large portion of his contract being paid for. I don't see the Mets doing that with their current financial situation. So know this. We're stuck with him, for better or worse. 

*In our first installment of the Future Impact series: How does R.A. Dickey factor into the future of the Mets?*

• Born (Age): October 24, 1974 (36) (Wiki)
• Current Contract: 2 years, $7.8M (2011-2012), $5M Club Option (2013) ($300K buyout) (Cot's Baseball Contracts)
• Season Statistics: 75.2 IP, 4.04 ERA, 48/24 K/BB, 1.388 WHIP, 4.16 FIP (Baseball-Reference)

I thought I'd start off the series with one of the more interesting cases on the team as far as future impact is concerned. As you probably know, Dickey is old. He's 36 year's old to be exact. So what kind of future can Dickey really have in the Mets organization? Actually, he could have a lot more value going forward than some might think for a couple of reasons. 

The first reason is he's a knuckleballer. Knuckleballers tend to last longer, showing the ability to pitch into their 40s. Joe and Phil Niekro are obviously prime examples both pitching into their 40s (43 and 48 respectively). Another example would of course be current Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield. He's currently 44 years old and is still chugging along for the Red Sox. He's now the longest tenured member of the Sox sticking on the roster since the 1995 season. So there is clearly a precedent for knucklers to hang around. Granted, these are some of the best to ever let the ball flutter, but Dickey has shown in his two years with the Mets that he can be effective. Speaking of which…

In his two years with the Mets, despite a shaky start to this season, R.A. Dickey's gotten back on track and he has shown that he can be a very good pitcher without overwhelming velocity. He does have a mid-80s fastball which is rare for a knuckler to employ, if not completely unprecedented. This is really the key to his success in my opinion. His uniqueness as a pitcher really throws off opposing hitters. Not only does he get a strong differentiation between the speed and movement of his pitches. But unless you've seen him a few times as a batter, it's incredibly difficult to compete with him given the fact that there aren't any other pitchers like him in the majors right now. Batters just aren't used to facing a pitcher like Dickey.

So what does all of this mean for Dickey and the Mets going forward? It means that maybe you should get used to seeing Dickey in a Mets uniform, because there's a possibility that he's going to stick around for awhile. He's under contract for next season with a club option for 2013. He'll be 40 years old in the 2015 season. Anyone want to bet against the fact that he's still a Met by then? I don't…

The average age on the Mets of the Mets is 28.9 according to ESPN. That number has come pretty far down since 2006 when the team was filled with lots of old players like Tom Glavine, Orlando Hernandez, Darren Oliver, Jose Valentin, and of course, Julio Franco. I'm really glad to see the team finally inject some youth into its roster. While some of these players have similar production over the course of the season to older guys, their best days are still ahead of them. They're still learning and they offer hope for the future. So with all that in mind, I decided to see just how important the current Mets can be for the Mets long term. So once every day or so, I'll put up a post about the future possibilites . Here are the players under consideration:

• Pedro Beato
• RA Dickey
• Dillon Gee
• Jonathon Niese
• Bobby Parnell
• Mike Pelfrey
• Francisco Rodriguez
• Josh Thole
• Daniel Murphy
• Jose Reyes
• Ruben Tejada
• Justin Turner
• Jason Bay
• Angel Pagan
• Jason Pridie
• Taylor Buchholz
• Ike Davis
• David Wright
• Lucas Duda
• Fernando Martinez
• Jenrry Mejia
• Johan Santana

I know there are a few older guys on the list like RA Dickey, but I think analyzing his future on the team is going to be really interesting as a matter of fact. 

Look for the first segment within the next few days.