Callaway Saves The Harvey Honeymoon

Matt Harvey isn’t going anywhere.

The rumors were firing off the walls of the Swan and Dolphin Resort. First, Harvey was going to Texas.

Mets and Rangers are conversing.

— Mike Puma (@NYPost_Mets) December 11, 2017

Then, Harvey was going to Camden Yards.

#Orioles discussing trading a reliever for #Mets’ Harvey, sources tell The Athletic. Brach ($5.2M) and Harvey ($5.9M) have similar arb projections per @mlbtraderumors. Both entering FA years. O’Day owed $9M each of next two seasons.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 11, 2017

Hell, even the Cubs were interested even though Dave Ricketts’ wife once said “Screw you, Matt Harvey!”

Cubs have shown some interest in Matt Harvey. As with O's and Rangers, unclear how serious as of yet.

— Andy Martino (@martinonyc) December 12, 2017

This is what happens when the Winter Meetings are active. Rumors fly, gain friction in a small space, then die off like static on a balloon. This is a little different because instead of the static dying off, the balloon was stabbed by Mickey Callaway who, along with pitching coach Dave Eiland made a plea to Sandy Alderson to keep Harvey.

Sandy Alderson says the Mets will keep Matt Harvey, based on Mickey Callaway and Dave Eiland's recommendation they do so.

— Mike Puma (@NYPost_Mets) December 12, 2017

While Alderson stopped short of promising that Harvey would open the season as a Met, you can pretty much put this in the bank. Even without the Callaway endorsement, it made no sense for the Mets to trade Harvey while his value was lower than Bitcoin in 2010. Even the largest consumers of Harvey Haterade had to admit that it wasn’t a great idea to trade a has-been for a never-was like Jurickson Profar. And Eminem responded to the Orioles rumors by tweeting “F**k a Papa Doc, F**k a clock, F**k Brad Brach, F**k y’all if you doubt me.” (Not really, but I just wanted to quote 8 Mile.)

Callaway’s plea cinched it. Look, the Mets have put a lot of stock in what Callaway can do. Once the fans universally accepted him as a manager and how he can singlehandedly improve the players on the team, you can bet the Mets took notice of that on social media. Is that the reason that the Mets aren’t aggressively signing players? Probably not, but it makes them feel a lot better about not doing it now that more fans trust Callaway to teach the pitching staff this Curve Ball Of Death. So when Mickey makes one request of the GM, it would look really bad on Sandy’s part to deny his request before a game has even been played, especially if he says he’s eager to work with him. Yeah, it’s just another way to say “I can fix him in ten minutes”, but why not see if he can actually do it when you’re trusting him to do it anyway? And why would you deny him that chance … for Jurickson Profar?

Harvey’s trade value is gone. The time to trade him was after he pitched a full season in 2016, which didn’t happen. So this is where we’re at. The choice is either to roll the dice with Harvey, or trade him for a .229 hitting bust of a prospect or a middle reliever whose ceiling is the second floor of a brownstone. If you’re going to trust Callaway anyway, you might as well trust him with Matt Harvey.

So, hope you enjoyed this 48 hour period of lunacy which ended with everything being the same as it was before. You’ll never get this time back. That’s the motto of the 2017 Winter Meetings.