Matt Harvey of the New York Mets made his first start at home since his suspension last night. Harvey worked a clean 1st inning getting a strikeout, a pop to shortstop and a fly out to leftfield. Then Harvey’s Mets teammates went out and put up seven runs in the bottom of the 1st inning which hopefully helped him relax. Harvey pitched 5 innings giving up 2 runs on 3 hits while walking 4 and striking out 6. Harvey did pick up the win to even his 2017 record at 3-3. Harvey threw 103 pitches in this his 9th start of the season. The win was Harvey’s first since April 11th, but he hasn’t pitched more than 5 1/3rd innings in his last 5 starts.
Now this is Harvey’s 5th major league season. He’s made 91 career starts and has a record of 32-31 with an E.R.A. of 3.16. Now remember just a couple of seasons ago Harvey was going to lead the Mets pitching staff to regular playoff appearance. The Mets did make it to the World Series losing to the Kansas City Royals in 2015. Now the talk has turned to is it time for the Mets to try and trade Harvey.
Harvey is just 28 years old and you have to wonder what the market would be for a pitcher who has been injured and struggled like Harvey has the last two seasons. Harvey made just 17 starts in 2016 and was 4-10 with an E.R.A. of 4.86. Would a contender be interested in maybe adding a pitcher like Harvey to the back of their rotation? and would a change of scenery do him good? It’s still a little too early for teams to jump into the trade market; so the Mets should have some more starts to evaluate Harvey and decide if he could be a trade candidate. Of course with the injuries the Mets are dealing with in their starting rotation they might need to hang on to Harvey just for the innings.
Jacob DeGrom and Harvey have made 9 starts for the Mets while Zack Wheeler who missed two seasons recovering from Tommy John surgery has made 8 starts. Robert Gsellman has made 7 starts, Noah Syndergaard has made 5 starts while Tommy Milone has made 3 starts. The Mets also got single starts from Adam Wilk and Rafael Montero. Steven Matz has not made a start this season for the Mets do to injury. Matz was schedule to make a rehab start yesterday and if all things went well could be activated from the disabled list to make a start this weekend. Syndergaard is on the 60-day disabled list and isn’t expected to return until after the All-Star break.
Could these injuries to the starting staff lessen the chance that the Mets would trade Harvey or do you think there’s a chance that Harvey is wearing a different uniform this season?
Now everyone likes to talk about prospects in baseball and it can be integral to your fantasy baseball success. So in case you didn’t hear the Boston Red Sox are calling up their top prospects 1st baseman Sam Travis. Travis is 23 years old, but was having a great start to his Triple-A season at Pawtucket. Travis is coming back from a knee injury that limited him to just 47 games in 2016. In 33 games at Pawtucket Travis is hitting. 286 with 4 home runs and 14 RBI’s Travis’ OPS is .805 and he has 9 doubles. Travis recently was rated as the Red Sox’s 4th best prospect and the #98 prospect in baseball by ESPN’s Keith Law.
It will be interesting to see how the Red Sox handle Travis’ playing time. Travis has been exclusively a first baseman throughout his minor league career, but the Red Sox have gotten good production out of their current 1st baseman Mitch Moreland. Moreland is leading the American League in doubles with 16 and has hit 5 home runs while driving in 23 runs. Moreland was signed to a 1 year $5 million dollar deal this past off season. Now the original plan for Moreland was for him to play 1st base against right handed pitching and then move Hanley Ramirez to 1st base against left handed pitching, but Ramirez has played only three innings at first base because of soreness in his right shoulder.
With Travis being called up you’d have to think that the Red Sox would want him to get regular at bats, but who loses the at bats Moreland or Ramirez? Moreland can play the corner outfield spots; so he might be able to get some at bats there, but Ramirez is limited to just 1st base or DH. If Ramirez’s shoulder is still an issue maybe he’s headed for the disabled list, but will have to wait and see how the Red Sox handle who gets the at bats.
The Ottawa Senators picked up a 2-1 win over the Pittsburgh Penguins in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals to force a Game 7 on Thursday night.
After a scoreless 1st period the Penguins got the first goal of the game at 4:51 of the 2nd period when Ian Cole and Scott Wilson assisted on Evgeni Malkin’s goal. At 13:15 of the 2nd period the Senators got even on a 5 on 3 power play as Bobby Ryan scored to tie the game at 1-1. Ryan was assisted by Erik Karlsson and Kyle Turris. The Senators went to the lead early in the 3rd period when Mike Hoffman scored at 1:34 of the period to give the Senators a 2-1 lead. Fredrik Claesson and Clarke MacArthur assisted on what turned out to be Hoffman’s game winning goal.
Craig Anderson had struggled in goal the last couple of games for the Senators including being pulled from the net after giving up 4 1st period goals in Game 5. Anderson looked like a completely different goaltender in Game 6 as he stopped 45 of the 46 Pittsburgh shots he faced. Matt Murray got the start in goal for the Penguins again and played well. Murray stopped 28 of the 30 shots he faced.
Pittsburgh will host Game 7 tomorrow night as the Nashville Predators sit and wait for the winner of this series. The Predators eliminated the Anaheim Ducks in six games in the Western Conference finals. Nashville won Game 6 by a 6-3 score and took the series four games to two.
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