Logan Verrett will start for the Mets on Monday, in place of Matt Harvey in an effort to limit his innings before the playoffs.
You may remember that Verrett tossed eight innings of one-run baseball in his last spot start, on August 23 in Colorado, so no need to panic.
The Mets expect to pitch Harvey again against the Yankees at Citi Field. After that depending on whether or not the game has any significance, he could pitch against the Washington Nationals in the last series of the season also at Citi.
A rattled Matt Harvey appeared more like the Joker than the Dark Knight on the mound in Washington last night. Harvey got in early trouble allowing three runs in the first two innings, settled down over the next three then struggled mightily in his final frame in the sixth. With runners on first and second and no one out, Harvey rushed to make a play to third on a Washington bunt, bobbling the ball with everybody safe setting up the disaster that followed.
But, Harvey’s teammates had his back, rallying from a 7-1 deficit sending 10 straight batters to the plate with two outs in the seventh to score 6 times knotting the score at 7’s. Then it was a riveting Kirk Nieuwenhuis home run in the visitor’s eighth that put the Mets on top for good with Clippard and Familia shutting the door on the Nats.
Harvey’s fall with the Mets surviving to add another game to their Eastern Division lead was the exact prescription that many Met fans had been hoping for. It’s a natural reaction after the Met ace offered support to his agent Scott Boras when the conniver threw a curveball of his own into the late season pennant race, calling for the Mets to shutdown his client after reaching a hard cap of 180 innings.
Like every Met fan, the Boras snipper attack was maddening. But, unlike so many Met fans I place a target solely on Boras’s back, not on Harvey. Boras set Harvey up and then left him to withstand the public scrutiny on his own. And, try as he might to deflect the probing entreaties of a hungry press, Harvey proved far less adept at getting out of that jam than is generally his custom when facing dangerous hitters in the batter’s box.
Recently, when my Met friends have raged at the fallen Met hero, I have countered with a simple request. “Take a step back for just a moment and try to wear someone else’s socks and shoes,” I ask.
“Pretend for a moment you are Matt Harvey’s father. A forlorn Matt comes to you asking for your counsel. ‘What should I do, Dad’ he wants to know. My surgeon is worried by the number of innings I’ve pitched and says throwing too many more this year might jeopardize my reconstructed elbow. My team is on the cusp of entering the playoffs for the first time in years and the city is alive and expecting me to lead the charge. What do you think I should do?”
In every case but one, and he was an 80-something former college baseball coach, my angry Met fans greeted my query with long pauses. Many times the pauses turned into cockeyed smiles.
You see, it’s not an easy question. Trying to think of yourself as Matt Harvey’s father advising his son on what’s best for his future moves most from reacting as a fan to reacting as a parent. The prospect of your son risking the security of a $100 million dollar plus payday, a life altering event that would provide lifetime financial security, helps me understand just how complex and how difficult this issue really is.
In no way am I advocating the manner in which this thing played out. Boras has been disingenuous, almost devious. He blames Met management for caring more about winning than the long term health of his client, when during spring training when the Chicago Cubs made a financial decision to extend their control over their slugging prospect Kris Bryant by keeping him in the minors for the first few weeks of the season, his agent, the same Scott Boras, went postal accusing the Cubs of not wanting to win. You can’t have it both ways.
And, in no way am I blaming the Mets for the way they have handled Harvey’s return. The moves the Mets have made in trying to monitor Harvey’s pitches per outing and the overall total of his innings were made in their pitching ace’s best interest. Starting at the close of the 2014 season, the Mets have been extremely cautious in managing Harvey’s progress and patient, too, in showing calm when Harvey pushed back against the strategies they employed to protect him.
Too often, it seems Americans are losing the ability to consider things from someone else’s point of view. Looking at the Harvey dilemma from the vantage point of his father, or his mom, if you wish, helps me process the recent events differently.
Want as I do, as a passionate Met fan, for Harvey to continue as part of the Met rotation through the pennant stretch and throughout the post season, role playing Matt’s Dad, if I’m honest, turns my outlook in a different direction. As Matt’s Dad, if Dr. Andrews has really recommended that Harvey stop pitching at 180 innings, even though I don’t feel there is a proven science involving a pitcher’s elbow issues, I’d have to advise Matt to follow his surgeon’s advice.
It was Keith Hernandez who once said, pitchers have been blowing out their arms forever. In his day, a time before MRI’s, the unfortunate ones simply disappeared. They went back home and drove a mail truck or worked in a lumber yard.
Dark Knight or not, Matt Harvey belongs on a pitching mound in a baseball uniform for a long, long time. Hopefully, it’s a uniform with Mets written across the front.
