Matt Harvey‘s next start will be on Sunday night against the crosstown rival New York Yankees, but the question on everyone’s mind will be, how much will Harvey pitch in that game, given that Matt is approaching his innings limit?
“We’re going to keep a very close eye on him,” manager Terry Collins said. “The Yankees will decide when he comes out, but it won’t be real deep in the game.”
The Mets made the decision this week, that Harvey will pitch in all of his remaining starts for the remainder of the season because they don’t want him to get rusty ahead of the postseason.
Terry Collins said the plan is to limit Harvey, but keep him in a regular routine in the rotation by piggybacking him with another starter, most likely Logan Verrett.
“There are huge challenges and we’ve tried to address those,” said Collins. “We realize there’s an innings limit and we realize he’s close. He is going to pitch if we get to the postseason… The issue is he’s a big factor. And as we head into the last 17 games, you need your best guys available to pitch.”
“We think if we pitch him and don’t go crazy, we not only can get some things now, which are important to get him ready for the postseason, but also have him available for the postseason,” Collins said.
“So the difficulty of it all is hard. There are a lot of discussions that went into it — what was best, what’s not, what’s going to work, what isn’t? No one has any answers because I think this is something that’s pretty strange to happen at this time of year to your starting rotation. But we’ve had to deal with it and we will.”
Bottom line, expect Harvey to pitch no more than five innings on Sunday against the Yankees no matter how well he’s pitching.
