When right-hander Dillon Gee rejoins the rotation on Wednesday against the Padres in San Diego, the much debated six-man rotation goes from all talk to all business for the New York Mets.
The Mets will have Jacob deGrom pitching in the series opener on Monday against the Padres, with Noah Syndergaard going on Tuesday, Gee on Wednesday and presumably Matt Harvey on Thursday in Arizona.
The primary reason for the six-man rotation was so that the team could keep young Noah Syndergaard in the rotation. “We want this guy pitching here,” Terry Collins initially said.
But make no mistake it had a lot to do with Matt Harvey and Jacob deGrom too.
“We have to watch the workload of basically three young pitchers,” Collins told the New York Post.
“They’re on somewhat of an innings limit through the season. At the particular rate they are going right now, every one of them would supersede that limit quite a bit.”
“The only way we thought we could do it without shutting them down at some time was to add a sixth pitcher. It takes basically four starts away from them. When you add that seven innings a start, you’re looking at basically 30 innings that we short them.”
The six-man rotation means that the team goes back to playing with a four-man bench, something they had tried and abandoned earlier in the season.
On Monday, Collins said the team was committed to this plan and intend to stick with it at least through August. However, yesterday Collins backed off a little and said they won’t hesitate to scrap it if they need to.
“If we look up in the middle of August, not that we’re going to go that far, and we need Matt Harvey out there more sooner than later, by God he’ll be out there on the five-day scenario,” he said.
Nobody knows how this is going to work out. Pitching coach Dan Warthen said that all six starters had reservations and needed to be talked into it including Syndergaard who’s the main reason the Mets decided to implement this plan in the first place.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this all works out for us in the end. I have concerns about taking a dozen starts away from Harvey, deGrom and Syndergaard and spreading them out to Colon, Niese and Gee. But here’s hoping for the best.
