The Mets will keep Matt Harvey on a rough limit of 90 pitches for his April starts, manager Terry Collins told reporters (including Adam Rubin of ESPN New York) following Harvey’s final Spring Training start today. The club’s plans to be fairly cautious with Harvey in his return from Tommy John surgery haven’t changed, GM Sandy Alderson said, despite how Harvey has dominated opposing batters in spring competition. Harvey threw four shutout innings of work today to drop his Spring Training ERA down to 1.19 over 22 2/3 innings. Here’s the latest on the Amazins….
- It seems “unlikely” the Mets and Lucas Duda will reach agreement on an extension before Opening Day, a source familiar with the talks tells CBS Sports’ Jon Heyman. Another source says there has been “not a lot of movement” in negotiations, and both the player and team have set the opener as the unofficial deadline for talks.
- Alderson told Adam Rubin that “I think that’s hard to say” when asked to comment on the progress of the Duda negotiations. “There will be resolution by Monday, one way or the other,” Alderson said.
- The Mets’ four-year, $23MM extension with Juan Lagares is “pretty much a can’t-lose” deal for the team “even if he never gets better than he was in 2014,” Joel Sherman of the New York Post opines. I agree with Sherman that Lagares’ new deal is a pretty reasonable price to pay for elite-level center field defense.
- Andy Martino of the New York Daily News also likes the Lagares contract, and between that extension and recent trades for Jerry Blevins and Alex Torres, Martino feels the Mets are entering the season on a positive note.
- Zack Wheeler also had surgery to repair a torn tendon in addition to his Tommy John procedure this winter, so the right-hander need more time than usual to recover, he told Newsday’s Marc Carig. The combination of the two procedures could push his return back to June or July 2016, though Wheeler hesitated to cite a firm date this early in his rehab process.
