MILWAUKEE — Matt Harvey, like Donald Trump’s envisioned America, is great again. The Mets, after two days of drafting, hope their pitching shelf is restocked again.
Where does it all turn from here?
Too early to tell, of course. Yet we’ve been wondering for a while how much longer the Mets’ super rotation will remain intact. And now you wonder whether the Mets’ pitching-heavy draft will factor into that.
For multiple reasons, Harvey, who clocked his third straight excellent start Friday night (six innings, one run, two hits, two walks and eight strikeouts) in the Mets’ wacky, 11-inning, 2-1 victory over the Brewers at Miller Park, stands as the rotation member most likely to depart first — as soon as this coming offseason.
When the Mets drafted Boston College right-hander Justin Dunn, a Freeport, L.I., product, with the 19th overall pick Thursday, they broke a longstanding trend. Dunn became the first pitcher to be the Mets’ top selection in Sandy Alderson’s six years as general manager. Then the Mets used their 31st pick, the one they received for Daniel Murphy’s departure to Washington, to pop another college arm from Long Island, lefty Anthony Kay from Ward Melville (Steven Matz’s high school) and Connecticut.
They took four more college pitchers (and four college position players) Wednesday, consecutively in the sixth through ninth rounds.
“We feel all have a chance to start,” Tommy Tanous, the Mets’ senior director of amateur scouting, said Friday in a telephone news conference.
Tanous emphasized the team simply has taken the best talent available. Could be. However, in an interview with The Post last December, shortly before he departed the Mets for the Cleveland Browns, Paul DePodesta admitted the Mets used their prior high picks on position players because they felt Omar Minaya had left them a fair number of pitching prospects and they wanted to balance their talent supply. Thanks to most of those young pitchers getting either promoted or traded, the Mets’ pitching cupboard currently looks wanting.
Dunn and Kay don’t figure to get much professional action this season, assuming they even sign. However, a college guy can make an impression in a short time. Not by itself enough to push Harvey or anyone else out the door. Yet any such ascendance could serve as one of myriad factors to motivate the Mets to listen more open-mindedly to other teams’ offers on Harvey.
Start with the fact the upcoming free-agent market for starting pitchers looks awful. The top starting pitcher in his walk year so far has been Oakland’s Rich Hill, who a) is 36; and b) currently is on the disabled list with a strained right groin. That means the trade market should be seller friendly, especially for someone with Harvey’s upside.
Continue with Harvey’s reality: He’ll be two years away from free agency by the time this season concludes, and there is scant indication either he or the Mets want to continue their often-rocky relationship beyond 2018. That he has climbed out of his worrying slump, with a sterling 0.90 ERA in his last three starts (totaling 20 innings), displays he still possesses elite talent and can work through adversity.
“I feel much better,” Harvey said late Friday night.
“Matt was very, very good,” Terry Collins said. “We are certainly on the upswing with him.”
Back in February, at the news conference to announce Yoenis Cespedes’ re-signing, Alderson said of his starting rotation: “I think you always are making choices. Even if the payroll were to go up, we’re still going to have to make choices. It’s nice that we have some of those choices to make and we certainly want to be in a position to keep some or all of those pitchers.
“So I don’t mean to say we’re not going to keep them all. We’d love to keep them all. We just have to make sure that we’re providing for that as we go forward.”
They provided for themselves with this amateur draft. Let’s check in again on all of their pitching provisions after the season. Focus on the summer, but know it will be a very interesting winter in Flushing. Even more so after this week’s happenings.