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Rockies rookie shortstop Trevor Story will soon undergo surgery to repair torn ligaments in his left thumb. Thomas Harding tweets that Story says he'll miss the remainder of the 2016 season. Story initially sustained the injury on Saturday against the Mets, when he jammed his thumb while sliding head-first into second base. In the bottom half of that same inning, Story appeared to aggravate the injury while trying to make a play in the field:

Story, 23, is batting .272/.341/.567 (120 OPS+) on the season with an NL-leading 27 home runs in 97 games. He's also spent more than 800 defensive innings at shortstop in 2016.

Here's what you need to know about the rookie's injury:

1. Story was perhaps the NL Rookie of the Year frontrunner.

It's a crowded fray of worthy rookies in the NL this season, with Corey Seager and Kenta Maeda of the Dodgers, Aledmys Diaz and Seung Hwan Oh of the Cardinals, Junior Guerra of the Brewers, and Steven Matz of the Mets all being strong candidates. Of course, there's also Story.

At present, Story leads all NL rookie qualifiers in OPS and home runs. Sure, Coors Field has played a role in those outputs, but we're also talking about an everyday shortstop. When it comes to overall value, Seager's probably the right choice, but Story's conspicuous power numbers and premium position would've made him a real threat to take the hardware.

2. He had a shot at making rookie history.

Story with his 27 home runs was already within spitting distance of the all-time record for homers by a rookie shortstop (held by Nomar Garciaparra, who hit 30 in 1997). Absent this injury, he almost certainly would've broken the record. Story had also already tied Albert Pujols (2001) and Dave Kingman (1972) for most first-half homers by an NL rookie (21).

As for most home runs by a rookie, Mark McGwire's 49 in 1987 was obviously out of reach, but the NL mark of 38, which is shared by Frank Robinson in 1956 and Wally Berger in 1930, was in play. Presently, Story's on pace for 42 homers, so if his prior power trends had held, then he would've set that record, too.

3. Fantasy owners may want to look at another rookie shortstop.

More about Arcia can be found in Scott's Fantasy Baseball Observations.

4. The Rockies had made a recent push for .500.

In their first full post-Troy Tulowitzki season, not much was expected of the Rockies. However, a 12-5 run since the break has pushed the Rox to within one game of the .500 mark. They also now boast a positive run differential.

To be sure, they remain long-shots for contention -- as of Tuesday morning, the SportsLine Projection System gave Colorado just a 2.4 percent chance of making the playoffs -- but a quality season was perhaps in the works. The Rockies haven't registered a winning season since 2010, which was also the last time they finished higher than fourth place.

As well, manager Walt Weiss, who's 71 games under .500 as Rockies skipper, may be fighting for his job. Suffice it say, the loss of Story strikes a significant blow against all of those goals.

5. He's not the only promising young shortstop in the organization.

For the rest of 2016, Daniel Descalso figures to to be the Rockies' primary shortstop. Assuming, however, that Story recovers completely and with his power intact, we can resume speculating about whether Story or top prospect Brendan Rodgers will be the long-term shortstop of the future in Denver.

We know what Story can do. As for Rogers, the third-overall pick of the 2015 draft is putting up strong numbers this season as a 19-year-old in the Sally League. Obviously, he's a long way away from the majors, but he's a potential top-10 overall prospect going into 2017. There's plenty of time for all this to sort out, and either Story or Rogers may eventually be moved off the position. This isn't a bad "problem" to have, of course.

The first step, though, is for Story to put this surgery behind him and get back to crushing the baseball.