Mets planning to have Matt Harvey face Yankees and Nationals
With Matt Harvey’s rough outing Tuesday night in Washington behind them, the Mets are now focused on planning his rest of the season schedule.
As we already know, Harvey will be limited down the stretch due to workload concerns from Dr. James Andrews, who performed his Tommy John elbow-ligament replacement surgery in 2013, and from agent Scott Boras. Harvey’s representatives would like to limit his workload to 180-185 innings, while the Mets and Harvey himself would like to ensure his availibility for the postseason.
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According to Marc Carig of Newsday, a compromise of sorts appears to have been reached.
Right now, the Mets are set on skipping Harvey’s next turn in the rotation, which would have come Monday night at home against the Miami Marlins. Harvey would then return the following weekend to face the New York Yankees, before being skipped again. The Mets would then look to have Harvey available for their final regular season series against the Washington Nationals.
The caveat with the Nationals start being that New York may have already clinched and might be to afford holding him back until the postseason.
The upside to that would be extra rest and fewer bullets used. That would appeal to Boras especially, as Harvey’s Tuesday start pushed to 171 2/3 innings on the season. The downside, of course, could also be the extra rest and entering the postseason out of rhythm.
With the Mets currently holding a six-game lead, the likelihood that Harvey only makes that one more start is pretty high. It’s possible he’d then go 2 1/2 weeks between starts, which under no circumstance is an ideal lead-in to October.
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It boils down to this: There’s no scenario in play that greatly benefits or is likely to satisfy all parties involved. The first-guessing will be going from now until the moment Harvey makes that first October appearance, so those same parties will just have to hope the results end up squashing any potential second guesses.
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Mark Townsend is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Townie813