The Yankees and Mets are both firmly in the playoff picture, with the Yanks currently occupying a Wild Card spot and the Mets holding a six-game lead over the Nationals in the NL East. Here’s the latest on each club…
- Though the Yankees had to put Mark Teixeira on the DL and will be without him for a week, the team isn’t planning to pursue any outside help at first base, GM Brian Cashman tells Joel Sherman of the New York Post. Astros slugger Chris Carter and the Marlins’ Casey McGehee have cleared waivers, Sherman reports, and while neither wouldn’t be eligible for the postseason roster if acquired, either could pair with Greg Bird at first base in Teixeira’s absence. However, Cashman doesn’t think the Yankees can find a definitive improvement over their internal options, suggesting that he doesn’t think too highly of either right-handed corner option mentioned by Sherman.
- Agent Scott Boras feels that the Mets are putting Matt Harvey in danger by not strictly adhering to Dr. James Andrews’ recommended limit of 180 innings. “Any club that chooses to defy a surgeon’s wishes is putting the player in peril,” Boras tells CBS Sports’ Jon Heyman. GM Sandy Alderson contends that he’s consulted with doctors all year and considered any innings limit placed on Harvey to be “soft” in nature. Boras disagrees: “Expert opinion by medical practitioners is not a soft number. There are no soft numbers. These are medical practitioners providing opinions about when a pitcher is at risk, and when a pitcher isn’t at risk.” The Mets plan to skip one of Harvey’s starts in advance of the playoffs, but the righty has still totaled 166 1/3 innings this season, so he’s on pace to pitch far more than 180, especially if the Mets make a deep postseason run. In that scenario, Alderson said that Harvey would be monitored on a “case by case” basis.
- Bullpen workload is a challenge for both Joe Girardi and Terry Collins down the stretch, writes the Post’s Ken Davidoff. Each skipper has a pair of late-inning weapons (Andrew Miller and Dellin Betances for Girardi; Jeurys Familia and Tyler Clippard for Collins), but each has had a heavy workload that will need to be monitored heading into October. As Davidoff notes, the presence of Clippard has been a godsend for the Mets, who had hoped to rely on a quartet of power arms — Vic Black, Bobby Parnell, Jenrry Mejia and Familia — only to see all but Familia work their way out of the team’s late-inning plans in one way or another.
As much as I hate to say it, I’m with Boras on this one.
Where is the science? There isn’t clear science that supports the innings limits.
Bahh. Boras just wants to take “his” people to “his” training facilities and “his” dr’s and away from the team for extended periods. That guy could care less about how much a team dearly needs a certain player in a playoff run, just like Boston dearly needed Ells every time he was hurt and Boras would have him squirelled away at one of his snake medicine farms for weeks at a time and away from the team.. Nobody would see, or hear from him when he was needed.
The Nationals protected strasburg, and how did that work for them?
Did you really just try to imply that Dr. James Andrews is a snake medicine salesman or that his medical opinions are somehow biased towards boras?
This is Dr. James freaking Andrews. He isn’t exactly the type of doctor that would even consider what boras thinks or wants. He could walk up to boras, take a leak on his leg, and boras will still send his clients with elbow problems to Andrews for evaluations.
According to Sandy Alderson, a much more respectable guy than Scott Boras, and Ken Rosenthal, a respected reporter, Dr. James Andrews never gives hard limits. Boras misunderstood the numbers and now is acting like a diva. It’s really not his place to interject.
“I want to ignore the doctors because I think it will keep him healthier” – Scott Boras
Not sure how anyone could reasonably agree with that.
What Boras doesn’t want to say is that the Mets have only allowed Harvey to throw over 110 pitches once this season. He can throw out IP limits all he wants but the number of stressful pitches a guy throws ever start is just as crucial, if not more. Plus nobody knows exactly how to keep a pitcher healthy, take the Nationals with Strasburg as a prime example.
While I agree they should be careful with Harvey, I don’t agree with the inning limit being a hard number.
If Sonny Gray and Hector Santiago both had TJ right now and came back for Opening Day 2017, would they both have the same inning limit?
Hector Santiago averaged 17.5 pitches per inning (most in MLB)
Gray averages 14.5 pitches per inning (3rd least in MLB)
Over 180 IP, Santiago would throw about 3150 pitches, and Gray would throw only 2610 pitches. So someone explain to me why IP is relevant, but pitches throw isn’t?
Being a former pitcher myself I am going to try to address this for you.. I do understand where you are coming from on the innings vs pitch count.. I would also add that the pitches used between innings as warm ups should be taken into account and its not so much the amount of pitches thrown as it is the type of pitches thrown.. A pitcher that throws 20 fastballs an inning is going to put less strain on his UCL than a pitcher that has thrown 10 sliders an inning..
Boras is right to be looking out for his client, but if I’m the Mets, I keep using him.
The Nats were silly to shut Strasburg down a couple years back, especially since he wanted to keep going. There’s obviously a balance to be had between win now and win later, but the science on inning limits is far from sound.
Mets got a 6 game Lead they need to Limit Harvey to Two Starts and keep him fresh for the More important games in the Playoffs,Beating the Braves can be done by scrubs on the Roster.
Boras should focus on Harvey’s welfare not on putting himself in the spotlight by coming out with such an arbitrary, one-sided statement. Throwing 180 innings regardless of pitch count is safe, but 180.1 is unsafe?
What is more important to Harvey:
1.) World Series
2.) Big Contract
I mean look at what happened to Strasburg, when he was treated with ‘kid’ gloves.
Or Jake Arrieta, the O’s shut him down because of bone chips and he was never the same with the O’s. Several years later, now look at him with the Cubs.
Hey as far as I am concerned, it’s a Matt Harvey decision and his alone.
Its not Harvey’s decision. Its the Mets decision. If Harvey wants to pitch but the Mets want to shut him down, thats the Mets decision.
What is Harvey going to do? Say he doesn’t want to pitch anymore?
If the Mets want him to throw 3 more starts then as many playoff starts as it requires for their run, hes going to do it whether Boras likes it or not.
I don’t blame Boras on this one–he has a career and a contract to protect. Harvey cannot say these things. Now, whether the number of innings, or the number of pitches, or the number of pitches in any game, or in any week, is relevant, I can’t say. But the Mets have a solid lead and they could stand to give everyone a little rest–and particularly a guy with this much talent.
I know this is going to sound harsh and uncaring but Harvey is a tool belonging to the Mets.. Whether they shut him down or have him throw 250 innings is entirely up to them.. Boras cares only to the point of his commission possibly being put into jeopardy.. If it was someone like Kevin Herrera in this discussion I highly doubt Boras would be flapping his gums..
I never understood why innings are a big deal for pitchers. If anything, it should be number of pitches they need to worry about