This is 100 percent hindsight.
Around this time yesterday, my expectation was that Noah Syndergaard was going to pitch in Thursday afternoon’s game. Instead, he couldn’t go and Matt Harvey went to the mound in his place. Harvey struggled with both velocity and command and had his worst start of 2017 as the Mets went down to another April defeat.
After the game, it was relayed that Harvey, expecting to pitch Friday, underwent a vigorous workout on Wednesday, a possible explanation for his poor start. Perhaps his body just didn’t have enough time to recover.
It’s never a good time to have your ace pitcher unavailable to go. But, if you absolutely had to have it happen, the best time would be after two days off. This way, you should have two rested starting pitchers to choose from to make the emergency start. If Harvey prepared to start Friday, shouldn’t pitching Jacob deGrom have been the move to make?
In addition to going on a regular turn, he last pitched on April 22, deGrom would have been pitching in the afternoon. In general, day/night splits have virtually no predictive value. However, it’s hard to ignore that deGrom is 15-4 with a 1.65 ERA in day games. In night games, he’s 15-19 with a 3.42 mark.
On top of that, deGrom has a lifetime 1.97 ERA at Citi Field, compared to a 3.52 ERA in road games.
Perhaps this has been answered somewhere else already, although there was no mention of it on MetsBlog or Mets.com or the New York Post. Perhaps deGrom was asked if he was ready to go and he said no. It just seems odd in hindsight that the Mets had the option of starting deGrom on regular rest at home during the day and went in another direction.
They were discussing this on WFAN this morning. Not the deGrom option specifically, but how badly the Mets handled this. Apparently, they knew at 10pm the night before that Syndergaard wouldn’t be able to make the start, but elected to wait until the next day, 3 hours before game time to let Harvey know. In addition to working out and throwing the day prior, he also may have gone out the night before thinking he wasn’t going to pitch the next day. It’s not fair to speculate that he was out late with his latest girlfriend drinking (although a possibility), but at a minimum, he probably stayed up later than he would have had he known he was going to pitch a day game.
With all the geniuses in the front office, it astounds me that the Mets continue to do things like this. And elect to not put Cespedes on the DL and then watch him get more seriously hurt.
I think they just wanted him to pitch against the Nats.
There would be no reason not to prefer Harvey. Overall he’s got a better ERA than deGrom and the only reason it’s even close is because of the three games last year before Harvey was shut down. A healthy Harvey has traditionally done well against the Nats.
A scary thought: the reason deGrom did not pitch is that yet another physical health concern has popped up?
Whatever the reasons we see and hear for the actions that occur are not enough. The main culprit here is Alderson who controls all of it. The behavior is shocking. Repeated hiding, obfuscating, and outright lying about injuries is unacceptable. This team refuses to use the 10 day DL and play short handed, a sign of real incompetence.
This has been going on with Phillips/Howe, Minaya/Randolph/Manuel and now Alderson/Collins.
What — or who — is the common denominator, do you think?
Hint: his initials are Jeff Wilpon…
The issue certainly stems from management and whether or not he’s directly involved, the buck stops with Sandy. I wouldn’t mind new leadership that knows how to use a bullpen, the disabled list and embraces defense.
So do things get worse or better if we get swept by the Nats and find out Flores is still not going to be ready by the end of his 10-Day DL stint?
Worse – getting swept
Better – extended DL for Flores
Tough crowd.
Brutal, actually.