Just Mets

Earlier in June, Sandy Alderson said Steven Matz had no more to prove to the organization in his body of work in the minor leagues, essentially saying the young left-handed pitcher was ready for the big leagues.

Now, it appears his time might be coming.

The Mets have decided to promote Matz to the big leagues, reports Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports.

Joel Sherman of the New York Post says the Mets haven’t executed a trade, so Matz will simply serve as an extra pitcher on the staff. As such, the Mets will be once again implementing another iteration of the six-man rotation, reports Adam Rubin of ESPN New York.

It’s not clear who the Mets would demote to make room for Matz, nor is it clear yet how the Mets will go about this six-man rotation right now, especially after it proved to be an ineffective experiment on three different occasions so far this season.

Mike Puma of the New York Post said earlier this week Jon Niese would likely transition into a long relief role once Matz was promoted, which he said would come by the end of the month. But now that the Mets will implement a brand of the six-man rotation, they need to figure out how to do this while keeping everyone in the rotation sharp and effective.

Matz has about 80-90 innings left before he reaches his innings limit, but the Mets could manage his innings – as well as Matt Harvey’s, Noah Syndergaard’s and Jacob deGrom’s innings – by taking Niese unofficially out of the rotation, and having him spot start a starting pitcher once per turn through the rotation.

That way, Niese can start once every five or six days, and each other starter gets one full turn of rest every five or six weeks, thus trimming the desired number of innings and starts off of their ledger this year.

Matz is scheduled to pitch Sunday, as is Niese. It would seem likely Matz will pitch on regular rest, and the Mets will go from there. The Mets do have plenty of off-days forthcoming, starting on Monday, a couple in early July as well as days around the All-Star break, so the Mets have to juggle this delicately over the next three weeks to keep everyone on the right track.

Regardless of the current situation, it’s really time for Matz to be in the big leagues at this point.

Does he fix the offense? No, but he probably makes the rotation stronger, especially with Bartolo Colon faltering as of late. He’s now past the 150 innings threshold the team likes for their pitchers to throw at Double-A and higher, and he was probably ready well before he got to that point anyway.

It’s remarkable the Mets will soon have four of their five top shelf starting pitchers in the rotation in short order. A year from now Zack Wheeler will rejoin the rotation, and assuming the Mets don’t trade anyone and nobody else gets hurt, they will have arguably the premier young rotation in baseball at that time.

Now, the Mets need to go find some bats to make them competitive at the plate.

Terry Collins said after Thursday’s win the club will officially announce their updated rotation tomorrow.

Matz, 24, is 7-4 with a 2.19 ERA in 15 appearances and 14 starts in 2015 with Triple-A Las Vegas. He’s allowed 69 hits and 31 walks with 94 strikeouts in 90 1/3 innings.

Original post, 3:00 pm, updated, 5:10 pm, 5:55 pm