According to Terry Collins, Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom, and Noah Syndergaard will all be let loose in 2016 and not have any sort of innings limits.
In an interview with MLB.com Collins said, “Fortunately, we’re not going to have to worry about innings this year. I think we’re always going to be concerned with workload. These guys are still young and we don’t want them to get hurt.”
“We’re going to be careful in Spring Training, bring them along a little slowly. I’ve done a lot of research of some of these teams in the past that have had young pitchers. One of the things I’ve learned is that you’ve got to be careful early in the year. If you’re planning on having them pitch in October, then they have to be ready.”
Zack Wheeler won’t be ready until June or July, and since he won’t be pitching for the first half of the season, he will most likely not have enough time to reach any sort of innings limit management sets for him.
Says Collins about Wheeler, “He looks tremendous. He’s in St. Lucie now. He’s throwing. He realizes it’s going to be a couple of months before he’s ready to go. That’s why we got Bartolo Colon back.”
After July, barring any setbacks or injuries, the Mets will have all five of their young arms in the starting rotation together for the very first time.
Collins didn’t mention Steven Matz when discussing the no innings limits. Matz pitched a total of 140 innings between the majors and the minors last season, so they could be a little cautious with him.
“With our pitching staff, if we score a few runs, we’ll have a good chance to win,” Collins concluded. “We were very, very proud of the way our team played last year. We just didn’t finish it off. Hopefully, we’re going to get another chance.”
Harvey, deGrom, Syndergaard, Matz, Wheeler… I can’t wait, what a rotation!
