TORONTO – God bless Matt Harvey. In a day and age when people no longer write anything more than 140 characters let alone read, the New York Mets’ “diva right-hander” – as the New York Post’s Ken Davidoff referred to him – put up something on The Players’ Tribune on Sunday written, no doubt, by one of that site’s minions that attempted to allay the concerns of Mets fans and executives:
He will pitch in the post-season, he said.
But first he, agent Scott Boras and the Mets need to come up with a way to manage his innings down the stretch. You know the story: Boras decided to go public last week with the claim that Harvey had a hard and fast 180-innings pitch limit, which when taken with the fact he’d already thrown 166 1/3 innings, made it unlikely he’d be able to make both his next four starts and pitch in the playoffs.
The Mets called B.S.; Harvey then pushed the entire organization, specifically general manager Sandy Alderson, under the bus – and in the middle of an unexpected pennant race the Mets found themselves all over the tabloids not for winning but with suggestions that whatever happened, Harvey had just signed his winter exit visa from Citi Field in his final year before arbitration.
Several major league teams – the Toronto Blue Jays among them – have moved away from using percentage-based innings calculations to determine what constitutes overuse for pitchers, specifically those coming off Tommy John surgery, for a simple reason: They haven’t worked. And I contacted four GMs over the weekend – guys I know pretty well – and asked them whether they’d ever heard Dr. James Andrews be that specific about innings limits. All of them have had multiple players or pitchers who have had surgery performed by Andrews; none of them have ever heard Andrews dictate a hard and fast innings limit.
“In fact, he stresses the difference in pitchers,” said one. “Scott is full of (expletive deleted). He’s looking out for himself. Last winter he told everybody that one of the selling points with Max Scherzer was that he hadn’t thrown as many innings as some other big free agents – that teams were getting a fresher arm. This is all about making money off Matt Harvey down the road.”
Normally, I’d be predisposed to siding with the player or pitcher in these circumstances. It is a business, after all, and in the end everybody is disposable. The team is always in control in these situations. There is now some thought to letting him start Tuesday, then backing him off or using Harvey judiciously out of the bullpen.
Although a more creative answer would be that provided by Baseball Prospectus’ Rany Jayerzli, who has long argued the number of pitches thrown is more important than innings and says: “If the Mets were to limit Harvey to 3,000 pitches, at his current pace of pitches per inning, Harvey could throw 203 innings.”
But here’s the issue, to me: The Mets have accommodated Harvey all along, going with a six-man rotation, backing him off – and each time he has said publicly that he’s OK with the approach. This really isn’t another Stephen Strasburg situation: Harvey is five months farther along post-Tommy John than Strasburg was when the Washington Nationals shut him down in 2012 and while Strasburg was on fumes when that decision was made, Harvey has an earned run average of 1.35 in his last five starts. This fuss is on Boras.
“ALEX … MEET MARK”
Alex Anthopoulos’ friends have told me that I and others have overstated any pre-existing relationship between the Blue Jays GM and incoming president Mark Shapiro. Fair play to them. And, yes, some are worried about what Anthopoulos’ Jays future is, although one person who has worked with him for years says: “Alex will stay … he just might not give them (the Jays) as big a hometown discount as they wanted.”
But one person in the Blue Jays front office who might turn out to be a key contributor to the relationship is Tony LaCava, Anthopoulos’ trusted assistant general manager. LaCava was formerly the director of player development with the Montreal Expos and was one of few employees who decided against going to Florida when Jeffrey Loria spirited away most of the Expos front office (and some of the furniture) after the 2001 season. Then Blue Jays GM J.P. Ricciardi called then-Indians GM Shapiro on LaCava’s behalf, and LaCava worked as a national cross-checker for the Indians. When the Indians traded Bartolo Colon to the Expos for Lee Stevens, Grady Sizemore, Brandon Phillips and Cliff Lee in 2002, it was LaCava who pressed for the inclusion of Sizemore, who was having a difficult season at single-A.
If you want to know more about Shapiro’s baseball bona fides and how he had a role in the re-emergence of the Indians in the mid-2000s, the book to read is Terry Pluto’s Dealing: The Cleveland Indians’ New Ballgame: How a Small-Market Team Reinvented Itself as a Major League Contender. It includes a detailed breakdown of that deal with Montreal including the fact that Jose Vidro and Brad Wilkerson were actually the players the Indians focused on before turning their attention to prospects.
Since Wilkerson was a Scott Boras client … and since Shapiro and the Indians haven’t been afraid of dealing with Boras in the past, I wonder if the Blue Jays’ unofficial aversion to Boras clients is a thing of the past, as is Paul Beeston’s aversion to anything more than five-year deals. Here’s hoping, eh?
QUIBBLES AND BITS
• Because you need to know this: In the 20 years of the wild-card era, 97 of the 120 division leaders at the end of Labour Day won their divisions. Eight of the 23 that saw their leads die went on to the post-season. Bottom line: Since 1995, 95 of 120 division leaders through Labour Day have clinched a playoff berth. The Blue Jays lead the American League East today.
• Just call him J.A. Happ: Difference-maker. Happ, who was traded to the Seattle Mariners by the Blue Jays for Michael Saunders and then shipped to the Pittsburgh Pirates, has allowed one run or less in each of his last five starts going into Tuesday’s outing. In the divisional-play era, only two Pirates pitchers have had such a run of success: Zach Duke (five in 2005) and John Candelaria (six in 1992.) Some time I will tell you about the time Candelaria left a World Series ring on the bar of Grumpy’s in Montreal when he was with the Expos, and how I recovered it for him … some time.
• There are some names you are required to contemplate whenever they come up as comparables – and Bob Gibson’s one of them. When the Chicago Cubs’ Jake Arrieta tossed eight shutout innings on Saturday he became just one of three pitchers in a 15-start span in one season to record at least 12 wins, an earned run average under 1.00 and more than 100 strikeouts. Gibson of the St. Louis Cardinals and Luis Tiant, then of the Cleveland Indians, did so in 1968, the Year of the Pitcher.
THE END-GAME
If you’re looking for a positive from Mark Buehrle’s outing against the Boston Red Sox, it’s that it ought to have rendered as moot any concerns about how Buehrle’s desire to hit the 200-inning plateau for 15 consecutive seasons would enter into the Blue Jays’ pitching plans this month. The answer: It can’t.
Jeff Blair is host of the Jeff Blair Show and Baseball Central from 9-11 a.m. and 11-1 p.m. ET on Sportsnet 590/The Fan. He is also a frequent contributor to Prime Time Sports with Bob McCown.