Rangers will watch Darvish regardless of what happens with Harvey

Not only can Matt Harvey not win on the mound, he’s about to find he can’t win with the media — any media, not just the New York media — after not facing the notepads and cameras after a bad start.

The New York Mets right-hander didn’t talk after his latest implosion Tuesday when he allowed five runs in five innings. It was the third straight start in which he allowed at least five runs and the fourth this season.

Harvey didn’t talk Wednesday, either, after Mets manager Terry Collins said that Harvey would make his next scheduled start Monday. Meanwhile, many in the media he didn’t talk to and others nationally have been speculating about the reason for his struggles.

He’s not in shape, which was scoffed at by agent Scott Boras. Harvey is tipping his pitches, something the Mets have dismissed. He’s fatigued. That one might have legs.

For now, the Mets and Harvey are looking at a mechanical issue that was detected on video and sweeping the 216 innings he threw last season, including the postseason, under the rug.

A star starting pitcher should be able to log that many innings, but one coming off Tommy John surgery probably shouldn’t.

But Harvey did, even though he was at the center of the big deal that was made about him sticking to 180 innings in his comeback season. Yet, the postseason beckoned, and he was last seen last season working into the ninth inning in the decisive game of the World Series.

Evidence supporting the fatigue factor is readily available, leading off with Harvey’s velocity taking a dip — a dip, not a plunge — from last season. That, though, might not be elbow fatigue as much as it could be the same bugaboo that hits all pitchers who have a month less to recover for the next season after playing an extra month in the playoffs.

There’s also evidence to support the mechanical issue, which Harvey worked on Friday, that has led to an early-season case of the sucks. He’s hardly alone.

And then there’s the great unknown, as Boras has told reporters. He’s right, as each Tommy John surgery recovery is different and no Tommy John surgery patient has logged as many innings in his first season back as Harvey did in 2015.

And that’s where Yu Darvish and the Texas Rangers come in. Darvish was to make his first start after Tommy John surgery Saturday night, with a pitch count somewhere around 85 to 90.

The Rangers are going to watch Darvish with each start, allowing him to work deeper into games as long as he can avoid high-stress innings. Runs don’t always have to be scored for an inning to be deemed stressful, nor does a high pitch count in an inning necessary to make it stressful.

Pitching coach Doug Brocail and manager Jeff Banister know one when they see one.

Brocail and Banister are also planning to keep tabs on Darvish’s innings this season, even though he is stronger than the normal pitcher and built to log innings. He has already missed nine starts, so it seems reasonable that he could max out at 23 starts the rest of this season.

Darvish has averaged 6  1/3 innings per start in his career, so he might keep himself under 150 innings. Brocail floated the idea of skipping Darvish in the rotation, something the Rangers did before he had Tommy John surgery to make sure he stayed rested.

The goal, of course, is for Darvish to still have bullets left for October, where the Rangers expect to be again this season.

The 2012 Washington Nationals had postseason dreams and realized them, but went to the postseason without young Tommy John surgery stud Stephen Strasburg. He wasn’t allowed to pitch in the playoffs after logging 160 innings in his first full year back.

Another young ace returning from Tommy John surgery, Jose Fernandez, was handled with kid gloves last season. The Miami Marlins, though, were out of contention and had no need to push their rotation centerpiece.

That wasn’t the case with the Mets and Harvey or the Nationals and Strasburg, and isn’t expected to be the case with the Rangers and Darvish.

Maybe the Mets didn’t expect to get to the postseason last season and never thought they would have to worry about an innings limit for Harvey. They are the Mets, after all.

But they did play in October, riding the right arm of Harvey, among others, to pull away for the National League East title and then march into the Fall Classic. That’s a lot of extra pitches for anyone, no less a Tommy John repair.

It will take Harvey or the Mets admitting that Harvey was taken too far on a new elbow or, God forbid, another elbow injury for a mishandling charge to stick. Anything else is simply conjecture.

Nothing Harvey has done this season is likely to alter the Rangers’ desire to have Darvish for a postseason run. They aren’t planning to take the same drastic measure as the Nationals did in 2012 with Strasburg, either.

This story was originally published May 28, 2016 at 4:20 PM with the headline "Rangers will watch Darvish regardless of what happens with Harvey."