The Mets had a meeting with Steven Matz on Tuesday. Matz is pitching with a bone spur in his elbow and they were talking about what to do and they needed to make a decision. Realistically, they should have had two options, either pitch on Wednesday as he was scheduled to, or undergo surgery. Instead, the Mets chose option C, push him back a day. Which is a decision that makes very little sense.
Steven Matz is going to have to pitch through discomfort for the remainder of the season if he wants to continue pitching. So whether he pitches on Wednesday or Thursday won’t make a difference. Matz will be pitching through discomfort either way. One extra day of rest is not going to make a difference in this case.
So the Mets have decided to push Matz back to Thursday against the Cubs. This means the Mets will use a spot starter Wednesday against the Nationals and Max Scherzer. In other words, punting the series. The Mets already lost the first game of the series and let’s be honest, they aren’t beating the Nationals with Logan Verrett going up against Max Scherzer. So now you have put added pressure on Matt Harvey in Tuesday night’s start. Because now he is basically pitching to avoid a sweep. If the Mets leave Washington four games back it wouldn’t be the end of the world. But if they leave getting swept and being six back, you could almost kiss the division goodbye.
This decision by the Mets has now made the game on Tuesday night against the Nationals the biggest game of the season. It might not be out of the question to say it is a must-win game. Because as mentioned before, if they lose this game, the Mets would most likely be staring at a sweep and falling six games back and then having a four-game series with the Cubs next. So Tuesday’s start for Matt Harvey might be his most important start since game five of the World Series.