Jacob deGrom has been one of the few bright spots for the Mets this season and now the team has to figure out how best to use his final 60 innings before he hits his 185 innings limit for the season.
General manager Sandy Alderson said they are weighing different options, but are leaning toward letting him get to the number without altering his routine since he’s been pitching well and has emerged as a Rookie of the Year candidate.
“I think that’s one possibility,” Alderson said before Monday’s 7-1 win against the Phillies at Citi Field. “Another possibility is to maybe skip him a start if we find the right spot to do it. So I think we have a couple of different ways of approaching that.”
DeGrom shared NL Player of the Week honors on Monday with Miami’s Steve Cishek after allowing just one earned run in 13 ¹/₃ innings in two road starts, earning two wins.
“Right now, I don’t think we want to interrupt the flow that he has going,” Alderson said. “The success he’s had.”
Manager Terry Collins said Daisuke Matsuzaka’s elbow inflammation had improved.
“[He’s] a lot better,” Collins said of the right-hander, who is on the 15-day DL. “We’re hoping three or four more days and he can start playing catch and see how he feels. The inflammation is down a lot… It looks like he’s gonna be OK…”
Dana Eveland was knocked out of the game in the ninth when he was hit on his left elbow by a Ben Revere liner. He underwent an X-ray, but no damage was found.
Collins isn’t sure he wants Lucas Duda to face Cole Hamels on Tuesday.
“He doesn’t hit Cole very [well],” Collins said of Duda, who has one hit and five walks in 18 plate appearances against the lefty. “And we’ve got a guy who does.”
That would be Eric Campbell, who is 3-for-6 with a walk in seven chances against Hamels.
“Eric Campbell is gonna play [Tuesday],” Collins said. “I don’t know where yet.”
There remains no plans for Matt Harvey to pitch off a mound, even though he feels good, because that would start the clock for his return and the Mets aren’t ready to do that yet. … Dillon Gee is expected to be able to throw around 105 pitches on Tuesday in his fourth start since returning from a strained lat muscle.
Alderson said he had “absolutely no recollection” of any conversation in which Tony La Russa, then as manager in Oakland, approached him, as the team’s GM, with suspicions that some of their players were using steroids, as La Russa said in a published report last weekend.
“I spent a lot of time thinking about those kinds of circumstances over the years, particularly eight or nine years ago,” Alderson said. “I have absolutely no recollection whatsoever of any such conversation.”
—Additional reporting by Fred Kerber