They are twin poles, for the moment, of a grim trend that has become the story of the baseball season: Matt Harvey and Jose Fernandez, must-see ace right-handers just starting their major league careers, sidelined suddenly by a serious elbow injury.

“It’s becoming a pretty common story,” Harvey said in the visitors’ clubhouse at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday, “but it’s something you definitely don’t want to hear about when the best pitchers in the game are going down for a year.”

Harvey started the All-Star Game for the National League last July, but by August he was finished until 2015. Fernandez of the Miami Marlins was the major league leader in strikeouts when the team placed him on the disabled list Monday night. Fernandez is likely to have ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction surgery, more commonly known as Tommy John surgery, the same operation Harvey had last October.

The procedure, in which a torn ulnar collateral ligament is replaced by a tendon from another part of the body, is the scourge and the savior of pitchers’ careers. First performed by Dr. Frank Jobe on John, then with the Los Angeles Dodgers, in 1974, the procedure has been performed on an alarming number of arms already this season.