New York Mets starter Matt Harvey has been a key aspect to the team's success this season. The club is one pace to make the playoffs for the first time since 2006, but Harvey's innings limit is now becoming an ever-growing issue. His agent, Scott Boras, is now involved in the whole controversy.
After Harvey's start on Wednesday, rumors began to surface as to how the Mets would handle him the rest of the way. Manager Terry Collins said the team plans to skip another start of his before the season ends, which would preserve him a bit for the postseason.
(We discussed yesterday how it's getting awfully close before Harvey gets shut down.)
General manager Sandy Alderson said before the 2015 season that Harvey could pitch up to 200 innings (including the postseason if the Mets made it). However, Boras has all of a sudden come out of the woodwork to announce that's not the case, and that the doctors' cap of 180 innings is not a "soft suggestion" and it's "not a negotiation."
"This is not a club's decision. This is a doctor's decision," Boras told Jon Heyman of CBS Sports. "Any club that chooses to defy a surgeon's wishes is putting the player in peril.
"Expert opinion by medical practitioners is not a soft number. There are no soft numbers. These are medical practitioners providing opinions about when a pitcher is at risk, and when a pitcher isn't at risk."
Well, if this is the case, then a) why didn't Boras say something after Alderson said Harvey could pitch up to 200 innings and b) why hasn't a medical expert weighed in on the issue or urge Alderson to shut down Harvey once he hits the recommended number of innings?
"As for why he didn't say something sooner, Boras said doctors don't like to set innings limits early because they want to see how the pitcher is doing and for fear of setting up false expectations," Heyman wrote. "But the agent contends that it shouldn't go beyond the number of innings thrown the full year before injury.
"That's why he didn't contact Alderson until Harvey was around 140 innings, when he said he let him know he would be checking with the doctors to see what was possible then."
Alderson has an entirely different interpretation of the situation.
"Alderson, however, contends the parties spoke before the season about protecting Harvey by having some innings limitations, and that they 'see no reason to deviate from the original plan,'" Heyman continued. "Alderson also says that the Mets had a 'soft' limit all along he felt was acceptable to all. He maintains that he has been in consultation with doctors as well."
"The Mets' general manager received an email from Boras in late August detailing the stricter limit, and the two have fought ever since," adds Mark W. Sanchez of the New York Post. "Alderson speculated the sudden, added caution arose after Jose Fernandez, himself returning from Tommy John surgery, went down with a biceps issue. The Marlins' ace is also a Boras client."
Alderson also seems unperturbed by Boras' "threat."
Person close to Alderson: "Sandy won't roll over for Boras (re:Harvey) the way Rizzo did (w/Strasburg). He's not changing the plan now.''
— John Harper (@NYDNHarper) September 4, 2015
Boras is known to stir things up, especially through use of the media (remember when he compared Oliver Perez to Sandy Koufax), and it's hard to believe Alderson would put his own franchise player in danger by overlooking this "non-negotiable" innings cap set by Dr. James Andrews and other expert specialists. Even so, it's doubtful that 10-20 more innings would put Harvey's health in significant peril, again, unless the doctors urged that it would.
Which brings us to the big question: Is Boras using this whole innings limit nonsense as leverage to negotiate a contract extension for the right-hander?
Harvey is set to enter his first year of arbitration this offseason. To date, he has earned $1,719,500 in three MLB seasons with the Mets, according to Baseball-Reference (not counting the 2014 season that he missed due to surgery). He's due for a big raise this offseason, but Boras could be looking to lock up his client through the arbitration years if he's uneasy about Harvey's long-term arm health ...
Or he might just want to guarantee himself money right now and has found his best opportunity to do so.
We know two things: (1) Boras does his absolute best (and usually succeeds) in getting every last dollar out of an organization for one of his clients and (2) the Mets have been hesitant to dish out long-term lucrative contracts in recent years due to the team's stingy ownership, which experienced a big setback from the Bernie Madoff scandal.
It'll be interesting to see how this entire situation unfolds. The Mets will need Harvey to maximize their chances of a deep playoff run. However, Boras may find a way to spoil the team's plans to use Harvey over this whole innings limit ordeal.
