How Harvey can pitch in playoffs

When the Kansas City Royals added Kris Medlen to their starting rotation in late August, they limited his pitch count in his first outing to no more than 75. Manager Ned Yost said Medlen would be allowed to throw as many as 85 pitches in his second start, and up to 100 in his third. The Royals are taking precautions with Medlen because he’s coming off Tommy John elbow ligament reconstruction surgery.

Notice the Royals didn’t say that Medlen would be limited to five innings, followed by six and seven. It was about pitch count, the number of repetitions. And giving Medlen an innings limit for a game would be silly, wouldn’t it? If they did it that way, he could post a quick 1-2-3 first inning, and it would look the same on a “Tommy John scorecard” as would a laborious 40-pitch frame. But they wouldn’t be the same at all.

And yet, doctors tend to prescribe seasonal innings limits for Tommy John rehab cases. They did with Stephen Strasburg of the Nationals in 2012, and they’re doing it again with Matt Harvey in 2015. In case you hadn’t seen, Harvey reiterated Saturday what his agent told CBS Baseball Insider Jon Heyman on Friday, that Harvey’s doctor recommends that he pitch no more than 180 innings in 2015. It’s an awkward time to announce this, with about a month left in the regular season and the Mets in good shape for a playoff berth, and most of all with Harvey having logged 166 1/3 innings already. That’s about two more starts with, apparently, no plans for the playoffs. Harvey, as a result, is getting skewered by the media and fans.

But there is a way to make this work, and it all gets back to Kris Medlen. Among the recent responses to the Harvey firestorm was a follow-up post on Facebook by Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports. In it, he quotes Harvey’s agent, Scott Boras (who also is Strasburg’s agent), and Boras refers to a “study he did” (don’t roll your eyes) of Tommy John pitchers who never exceeded 200 innings before surgery, but did afterward, and had all kinds of problems possibly as a result. The study is only four pitchers wide: Shaun Marcum, Josh Johnson, Jarrod Parker and Medlen.

All experienced complications, Boras said. All but Marcum had a second Tommy John.

In contrast, Boras said, the Nationals’ Stephen Strasburg and Jordan Zimmermann built their innings in a steadier progression, reaching 200 innings only in their fourth full season after Tommy John.

That study is why Boras believes it is reasonable to follow Dr. James Andrews’ recommendation of a 180-inning limit for Harvey.

But… it seems wrong to use innings, doesn’t it? Well, noted baseball blogger Rany Jazayerli wrote extensively three years ago about how the Nationals were messing up with Strasburg because of an innings limit. He says a similar mistake is about to happen with Harvey.

Harvey (left), you don’t have to end up like Strasburg in 2012. (USATSI)

Rany has a solution, however:

Rany compared the “Boras Four” to Harvey in terms of pitches thrown:

This would give Harvey much more wriggle room, and it doesn’t even account for the Mets backing off how many pitches they’d let him throw — which they presumably would. Does this make Harvey’s elbow any safer? We don’t know. There is very little hard evidence showing that limiting the number of pitches would mean a darned thing. We certainly don’t know that shutting him down at 180 innings would be safe, either. For all of the accumulated medical knowledge out there, 180 innings is a guess. It’s about how many innings Harvey threw in 2013, before he blew out his elbow, and it’s the most he had ever thrown as a professional, so that’s the number they picked. Why didn’t they look at number of pitches? Don’t know. And even if they did, it only would matter to Harvey’s elbow health in ways that professionals don’t understand yet.

What this plan does: It gives the Mets and Boras/Harvey something they can sell to each other. It allows Harvey a chance to keep pitching, to be the good guy again, after giving what some compared to a pro wrestling “heel turn” by “siding” with Boras and Andrews.

A pitch cap is more logically sound than an innings cap. It might not be better or worse for Harvey’s arm, but it will give him a “medical” excuse to keep pitching with caution.

The Mets still will have a Harvey Day come playoff time, if they follow Rany’s plan.

Don’t throw away a good plan for Harvey based on Boras’s study of the Medlen kid. (USATSI)

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