Next up in our projection series is Matt Harvey. Two years after he was drafted, Harvey was in the majors, showing the best fastball for a Mets SP since they started keeping track of such things in 2002. He was shut down after 10 starts but he showed enough in that span to have fans dreaming of 30 starts from Harvey each and every year for the next 15 years.
Will Harvey be able to keep up his electric fastball over an entire season in the majors? Here’s how we see things shaping up for him:
| Harvey Projection | IP | ERA | Ks | BB | BABIP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gray | 185 | 3.37 | 210 | 88 | .295 |
| Groveman | 181.2 | 3.53 | 186 | 63 | .275 |
| Joura | 190 | 3.49 | 185 | 67 | .292 |
| Koehler | 165 | 3.00 | 180 | 90 | .290 |
| Manners | 180 | 3.65 | 180 | 70 | .315 |
| Mcwilliam | 185.2 | 3.43 | 181 | 78 | .278 |
| Parker | 160 | 3.85 | 150 | 55 | .310 |
| Rogers | 180 | 3.10 | 150 | 60 | .277 |
| Stack | 170 | 3.44 | 173 | 64 | .299 |
| Stashin | 195 | 3.46 | 190 | 82 | .294 |
| Vasile | 190 | 3.75 | 195 | 85 | .300 |
No one thinks Harvey will fall on his face and even the most pessimistic of us think he will be able to give the team 160 innings in 2013. That would have been the third-most innings of any Mets pitcher in 2012.
Here’s what the group as a whole thinks Harvey will do in 2013:
If you combine the Harvey projection with the one that we did last week for Jonathon Niese, we think the Mets could get 371 innings at a 3.52 ERA from the duo. It’s not quite the 424 IP, 3.04 ERA that the Mets got from Niese and R.A. Dickey last year but it’s still a really strong start towards building a solid rotation.
Finally, let’s close with a table comparing the Mets360 numbers to those of two projection systems – Bill James and ZiPS.
| Harvey Projection | IP | ERA | Ks | BB | BABIP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bill James | 192.0 | 3.70 | 196 | 88 | .312 |
| Mets360 | 180.1 | 3.46 | 180 | 73 | .294 |
| ZiPS | 163.1 | 3.80 | 159 | 70 | .292 |
It’s encouraging that both James and ZiPS sees Harvey posting an ERA under 4.00 this year, even if neither is as optimistic as we are overall. The James projection sees more baserunners due to hits allowed, while ZiPS thinks his walk rate will be worse than what we project. Everyone sees quality innings coming from Harvey in 2013.
Check back Saturday for our next entry in this series.
Sadly, many of the starts i missed last year was when Harvey was pitching, so i don’t have a huge sample size of watching him. I had the misfortune of missing his debut and watching his disastrous Padre start.
I would probably go with something closer the ZiPs projection in terms of innings/ERA with a bit more K’s. He doesn’t seem quite that efficient to me yet, as he goes for (or maybe he just gets it naturally) a lot of K’s, which takes more pitches and thus he can’t pitch that many innings.
Brian,
How much of your prediction for Mets pitching is taking the below level expectations of the OF defense into account?
That’s the excuse if they don’t meet the projection!
I missed the submission deadline (sorry!), but for completeness, my Harvey projections were:
180 IP, 3.55 ERA, 191 K, 73 BB, .281 BABIP
Rob Rogan turned his on time and I misfiled them. Here are his:
IP 190
ERA 3.60
K 192
BB 60
BABIP .295
If Santana can stay healthy(and I know that’s a big if) it would go a long way towards easing the kids into the starting roles with less pressure at the back end of the rotation. I do believe all pitchers and your predictions will be heavily dependent on what Sandy does to address the shortcomings in the outfield.
When you look at Matt Harveys 2012 stats they compare favorably to another Met rookie pitcher. A 2.76 ERA, 170 k,78 bb and a rookie of the year award. I really don’t expect a repeat of 2012 but I can dream that a once in a lifetime pitcher has come around again. Realistically speaking I actually think the consensus was a little to optimistic and I favor James projection better but It was nice to reminisce about the summerof 1967,
[…] next nine starts, covering 54 innings, the buzz only got louder. With the trade of R.A. Dickey, we looked to young Harvey to take up the slack in […]