As most of you know by now, Matt Harvey has been named the National League starting pitcher at the 84th All-Star Game to be played at Citi Field tonight at 8 p.m. EST.
Harvey is the third Mets pitcher to start an All-Star Game. Dwight Gooden started the 1988 All-Star Game at Cincinnati and the 1986 Game at Houston. Tom Seaver started the 1970 All-Star Game in Cincinnati.
Harvey became the fourth pitcher in club history to make the All-Star team in his first full season in the majors. He joins Seaver (1967), Jerry Koosman (1968) and Gooden (1984).
“It’s definitely a huge honor and something I’m very excited about,” Harvey said after the announcement.
Manager Terry Collins plans to start reducing Harvey’s workload and even having miss another turn in the rotation once the season resumes.
“He’s going to get skipped again in the second half,” Collins said yesterday. “There are going to be games where he’s going to have his ‘A’ game. He’s going to pitch. Now, after that, his next start, he probably won’t pitch as much. Now, five innings? I can’t really tell you that.”
The plan is to cap Harvey at about 200-210 innings which amount to no more than 70-80 innings going forward – or about 11-12 of his average starts. That would mean missing three starts between now and the rest of the season.
I’m totally down with that considering that Harvey was on pace to exceed last year’s workload by about 75 innings. You wouldn’t want to do that to any young pitcher especially one as special as Mr. Harvey.
