9:29pm: GM Sandy Alderson has responded to the USA Today story, as Adam Rubin of ESPNNewYork.com reports (Twitter links). “Any plans we have for the rest of the regular season are tentative,” said Alderson. He went on to throw doubt on the notion of a settled strategy for the postseason, saying: “We have not spent any time yet on a ’playoff’ plan. Nothing has been discussed in that regard.”
9:24pm: The Mets have arrived at a plan to limit righty Matt Harvey’s innings down the stretch and into the postseason, according to Bob Nightengale of USA Today. GM Sandy Alderson indicated this morning that he and agent Scott Boras were working toward a compromise, as Harvey himself recently said would be the case.
The resolution, it appears, will be for Harvey to start tomorrow against the Nationals and then just make one more regular season start in a bid to keep him to about 182 or 183 regular season frames. He’ll only start in the season’s final week against Washington if the division is still at stake, per the report.
Most interesting, perhaps, is that the roadmap would call for Harvey to start only once per playoff series. Notably, also, the 26-year-old would potentially be placed on a roughly 60-pitch cap for his post-season outings.
In terms of on-field impact, it’s hard to downplay the significance of this modified usage. While New York now holds a commanding five-game lead in the NL East after gutting out a win today, and remains in the driver’s seat, the October limitations seem rather limiting. The Mets will also be looking to manage the workload of rising youngster Noah Syndergaard, and he or another pitcher could theoretically be paired with Harvey at times, but it would obviously be preferable — from a near-term competitive perspective — for the team to turn loose one of the game’s most potent arms without restriction.
From a transactional perspective, agreement between the sides would presumably help to ameliorate any bad feelings about the highly-publicized situation. Harvey is eligible for arbitration for the first time net year and is on track to hit the open market after the 2018 season. With the free-agency-oriented Boras as his agent, it’s long been expected that he would not seriously entertain extension talks, and some have speculated that the apparent discord could lead to a trade. There is little sense, really, in attempting to forecast the long-term relationship, but any compromise would at least appear likely to defuse serious future discord.
60 pitches per start? Exactly why are they pitching him if he will kill the entire team in terms of bullpen usage?
But in the post-season, a team can afford to work its bullpen harder than usual. Also, a starter is generally better his first and second times through the order, so by limiting Harvey to only 60 pitches, they might ensure that they get only his best in the post season.
All of that is true, but so is saying that with a 60 pitch limit, Harvey may only last 3 innings per start on average. The opposite team will definitely be trying to take advantage of that.
Even if you were okay sending your 7-8-9 guys out every Harvey start, you’re still looking at covering 2-3 innings every time he starts that gets into those vulnerable middle relief arms or relying on a starter-now-reliever.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not necessarily criticizing. I’m glad that the Mets are doing something to protect Harvey, as I think that Boras actually brought up a strong point. It’s a tough “compromise” though.
Even less, possibly. If a team goes up there and is super patient, maybe gets a couple hits, and if Harvey is just a bit off, he could easily have a couple 30 pitch frames then he’s done.
The 60 pitch limit is ridiculous. That said, HARVEY is #12 in MLB in pitches per inning, averaging only 14.8 PPI. 4 innings of HARVEY is still not acceptable for a playoff game. I guess Verrett can step in for innings 5-6, but again that seems disruptive.
NOBODY outside of the people who work for Scott Boras believes this. Harvey is gone at this point. He has no future in NYC. He has crushed the Mets chances for a WS and nobody wants him. This guy will be pitching in Colorado in the near future.
Colorado don’t want him.
You also have to factor in that they will have an extra starter in the pen (Matz or Colon). You could end up having a tandem-type thing going.
Also factor in for the 60 pitches thing that usually you’re pitching on short rest in the playoffs.
I see that doable for the first round. Not really for the NLCS if they reach it. Just makes things more complicated.
I took “60-inning pitch cap for his post-season outings” to mean that they’ll be limiting him to 60 post season innings. Not a 60 pitch count per appearance.
Nope, that was just a terrible mistake on my part. Fixed.
Once I thought about it, a 60 inning post season by any pitcher would be pretty impressive. Let alone one with injury concerns.
Yeah, it would pretty much shatter the current record of 52 and 2/3 (Bumgarner last year)
Orel Heischieser says hello
After the Mets’ victory today, I’d say their division lead is sufficient for them to limit Harvey’s usage without significant concerns about endangering their post-season plans.
They’re only 5 up with 25 to play – 5 of which is against the Nats…why would you assume they’re in the clear?!
The problem with that, is that A) it is not wrapped up, and B) stopping him and starting him up like that is more dangerous to his arm then him just pitching regularly.
Given what has occurred, and the legitimately murky waters about the capacity of first year post TJ patients, the Mets probably did the wise thing. As a practical matter, you don’t expose a pitcher of this level of talent (or anyone) to a great deal of risk. And, with the issue highlighted like this, if the Mets pushed it an he actually did get hurt, you wonder what the legal ramifications might be. With this, the Mets may have created a safe harbor for themselves. This was one of those situations that would have best been discussed and worked out privately.
Remember when the Yankees tried those 2-3 inning starts for Joba? Obviously the circumstances are different, but there’s a reason teams don’t try this nonsense.
If he’s the 3rd starter and they’re up 2-0, fine, if he’s the 1st guy up like suspected, no. His career isn’t going down the tubes because he throws 40 more pitches in a single game. How this arbitrary number(s) got so blown out of proportion is beyond me. 180 innings for Harvey may be 100 from re-injuring him or may be 1 shy of doing so, this is all just guestwork.
It is beyond you. These “arbitrary” numbers are constructed by individuals with far more experiance, skill, knowledge, education, and training. Individuals like dr. James Andrews and others with backgrounds in medicine, data analysis, or years of experiance with premier pitchers. This isn’t just guesswork – the mets aren’t trusting a bunch of mlbtr commentators for their opinions on when to shut him down. Don’t throw stones at science because you don’t understand it or don’t like the results.
I don’t know it enough either. I can’t tell you about the last article on the topic from NEJM or AMJ. But I understand enough about it to know when to respect the work of the professionals.
Andrews has NOT shown himself to have any expertise on pitching loads on injuries. He is a dumb surgeon. Leo Mazzone, however, is such and expert.
To the extent it is guesswork, it is educated guesswork. Also, it’s NOT just about whether or not/how long it will be til a guy re-tears his UCL. They are considering a host of other things: injuries to other areas b/c of mechanical changes due to fatigue or compensation for over-loading an insufficiently-healed ligament, stress that will decrease effectiveness/innings in the long run, longer-fused injuries, ineffectiveness due to ligament and related stress, etc.
Is any cap a magic number? No, and no doctor would every suggest that. All innings aren’t created equal, you have to actually watch the player, etc, etc, etc. But innings offer general guides, and that is — I’m sure — how they are used in reaching recommendations.
People like to say that there was a hard cap on Strasburg, but that wasn’t the case. It was a range they were looking to land in, and they ended up deciding just to pull the plug after he showed signs of fatigue and decreased effectiveness.
Nobody is sitting there waiting for the ticker to pass a certain, exact inning tally. But it isn’t “arbitrary” for doctors/teams to use innings totals as guides.
3 years $27M, buy out the arb years. share the risk between player and team. Still gets to FA on schedule.
Nah – screw him. get him out of here.
If he is that fragile, isn’t it time for him to find something else to do? I’m serious. Can you imagine if I told my boss, “Sorry, I’m only good for about 4 or 5 hours a day. I need to save myself for later in my career.” I’d soon become a greeter at Walmart. Not that there is anything wrong with that :p
Can you imagine if you had a marketable skill that is possessed by less than.00001% of the world and that skill had the potential to make you upwards of 200 million dollars over the course of your career? I can’t.
Can you imagine having negotiated a contract with your employer containing a provision stating doctors opinions would be followed only to have the employer refuse to honor that clause? I can’t.
Harvey is not going to make 200 million in his career. His arm is going to blow out. That is Scott Boras’s wet dream but the chances of harvey doing that is NILL. Aside from that, Boras’s agent on these board have said that Boras doesn’t need the 20 million dollars Harvey would earn him because Boras is making so much money elsewhere…. like Washington.
C’mon.
Why any team would take a highly valuable asset–and he is–and deliberately run him into the ground is the bigger question. In Harvey you have someone talented and controllable. If he needs a little extra care and handling this year, after having performed well, you give it to him. This isn’t football where you shoot the guy up and send him out there until he falls to pieces.
umm… because he is healthy and refusing to pitch in a pennant run the WS?
If Harvey and Mets don’t get along, they should trade him if they can’t re-sign Yoenis Cespedes. One possible destination is SEA. Harvey for Cruz sounds intriguing.
There is virtually no chance the Mets will employ Cespedes next year, FWIW. He can’t re-sign with NYM as a free agent.
Unless you see the Wilpons dangling ~$150MM or more at him this October, that’s really not a scenario worth any contemplation.
And now that thing I said this morning is no longer true.
This is not good. Once you allow someone like Boras to start dictating how you use a player opens Pandora’s Box. Met’s should have smiled at Boras, said “Thank you for your thoughts”, and moved on. Now, they have given in, and watch the flood gates open. Already happened in Pittsburgh where Boras has the Pirate’s skipping a start from Cole to “ease his load” after Boras started his antics with them.
The real problem is that the conversation took place openly. I still don’t understand how this thing broke open this way. If I were the Mets I would have planned this out better. Assuming the 180 innings pitched thing is the general rule of thumb, maybe skipping a start or two earlier would have been smarter. The real reason might have been that the Mets never thought Washington would have been this mediocre, or that they would have been a serious playoff contender, so they never took the potential for extra innings in the post season into account.
Harvey has pitched a whooping 400+ innings and he is 26 years old. It is so time to ship this guy out. Why even pitch him tonight. We made an error to hitch our wagon to him and I know first hand that the Mets management wants him gone, so why continue with him anymore. Just sit him and ship him out
If Mets fans and the Mets management want him gone, then the price should be very very low. I’m a Yankees fan, and I wouldn’t mind seeing him stay in NYC. Perhaps a ‘organizational depth’ piece would do it?
Why would the price be low?
mrbrklyn has said he should be a) shipped out, b) his arm is going to blow out, and c) mets management wants him gone, and d) no one wants him. He’s also said Andrews is a “dumb surgeon.” With all that, i would think the price ought to be low.
LMAO, so you gonna take a random post to heart? Bruh lol!