Kansas City Royals: Matt Harvey experiment not working out
The Kansas City Royals took a flyer on former first rounder Matt Harvey and it hasn’t panned out.
Nobody is really all that shocked that Matt Harvey hasn’t been very good for the Kansas City Royals, but now everyone is ready to move on from this experiment, as Harvey has been really bad in all three of his starts to this point.
Harvey currently has a 15.43 ERA through just seven innings, which have come from three total starts. He got hit hard against the Indians on Tuesday night, giving up five runs off of six hits in just 1.1 innings of work. Not a good night for the Dark Knight.
While the Royals really didn’t have much to lose by starting Harvey, now they know that he’s not a viable option to use moving forward. This is the kind of pitcher he is and he’s not going to return to that dominant pitcher the team faced in the 2015 World Series.
The Kansas City Royals can’t let Matt Harvey start another game.
With Jakob Junis now off the injured list and returning to the rotation for Wednesday’s game against Cleveland, it’s time for the short-lived Harvey era to end. The Royals only brought Harvey up from the alternate site because of Junis needing to go on the injured list, so there’s no use for him in Kansas City now.
The Royals now have Junis, Brad Keller, Brady Singer, Kris Bubic, and Danny Duffy to fill out their rotation and that’s a decent group right there to close the rest of the season out. Keller has been lights out and is proving even more that he’s the true ace of this staff.
Singer and Bubic are taking their lumps and hopefully learning from the mistakes they make as rookies. Even though they both have ERAs over five, both guys have been confident on the mound the entire time and fans should still be excited at what they can provide.
The whole storyline of “Matt Harvey pitched against the Royals in the World Series and now he’s here” was fun leading up to his first start in Kansas City, but after only pitching seven innings and posting an ugly ERA over 15, it’s time to end this experiment.
If one of the five starters do get injured between now and the end of the season, the Royals still have Kyle Zimmer in the bullpen who could serve as an opener. There are several better options than trotting Matt Harvey back onto the mound again.