The biggest news of the week seemed to come on Friday when the Brewers appeared to be on the verge of completing a trade with the Reds for Matt Harvey. The rotation is currently missing Jimmy Nelson and Brent Suter due to injury, and minor league performance issues delayed the activation of Zach Davies. Milwaukee is currently 18^th in team DRA over the season, but that number is heavily propped up by their dominant bullpen. Even though the team does need more production from their starters, it looks like they made the right call to hold the line on trading for Harvey.

One area where the team has noticeably struggled is in getting bulk innings from their starters. Part of this is by design as Craig Counsell and the front office subscribe to the third time through the order penalty, and will pull their starters to avoid overexposure. However, a team does need its starters to pitch enough to avoid depleting the bullpen. As I noted last week, Jhoulys Chacin is the only Brewers starter who has pitched seven innings at least three times. Currently, the MLB average start length is 5.5 innings. Milwaukee comes in slightly below that number at 5.4 innings per start. Matt Harvey is averaging 5.3 innings per start in 2018 in both New York and Cincinnati. In addition, his game log doesn’t show any recent trend reflecting increased durability over the season. Even before looking at his performance, Harvey was only ever going to slot into the five-inning starter role, with occasional longer outings. Milwaukee already has a bunch of those pitchers.

If Harvey isn’t going to provide bulk innings, then for the transaction to be worth the price, he’d need to provide quality innings. He has a 4.55 DRA this season, and PECOTA projects a 4.69 DRA for the rest of the season. His K/9 has rebounded in Cincinnati up to 7.1 from 6.7 with the Mets, but his Reds number and seasonal average of 7 is well below his career rate of 8.4. His swinging strike rate is 19 percent, slightly below last year’s performance. It’s also fallen every season he’s been in MLB.

Seasonal trends don’t paint a rosier picture. Harvey’s changeup is getting increased whiffs as is his slider, but the fourseamer and curveball are flat. However, he throws the fourseam fastball almost twice as much as the changeup and slider combined, still utilizing it as his go to pitch with two strikes, even if the other two options seem more effective. Since arriving in Cincinnati, the veteran has slightly decreased his fastball usage and thrown more sliders, but slider whiffs have fallen as he’s thrown it more. Maybe the Brewers could have persuaded him to change his pitch mix further, which could increase his strikeout numbers and effectiveness. That’s quite a bet to make with the playoffs on the line, but the Brewers have more information in this area than the public does.

Harvey is currently running a .279 BABIP as a Red, which is around his numbers when he was a dominant force in New York.  Much of that is fueled by hitters’ futility against his slider. While that pitch is still giving hitters fits, the improvement in results against his other pitches still leaves him as a pitcher batters don’t fear.

Fans love trades, and I think the team’s slump in the standings as well as an easy area for improvement left people disappointed that the team came close to consummating a deal that could have helped the squad. However, after looking into Harvey’s performance, he just hasn’t performed much better than the pitchers currently in place. There’s a chance that Harvey has some untapped upside that the current rotation doesn’t possess, but the odds of seeing that pitcher in Milwaukee aren’t particularly high. If the Reds were giving away Harvey, then a case can be made to complete the deal. However, there’s no reason for Milwaukee to give up a legitimate prospect for what Harvey is now.

Ryan Braun hit another homer on Sunday and has been on a heater since the All-Star Break. Over twenty six games, he has a .382 on-base percentage and .573 slugging percentage, with thirteen extra base hits and only eleven strikeouts. Braun’s True Average (TAv) has improved to .273, which would still be a career low but is well ahead of his .258 number from early June. Most importantly, he’s produced while only sitting out five games.

Braun is seeing more pitches to hit now than he was earlier in the season. Previously, pitchers had been pounding him low and weren’t afraid to throw balls, so long as he wasn’t getting anything in the upper area of the zone. Now, whether through mistake or bravado, Braun is getting more pitches in the middle of the strike zone, and he’s been crushing them. He’s also swinging and missing less, in particular at pitches that aren’t great. Pitchers weren’t going upstairs on him often through July 19, but when they did, Braun had no answers. That’s a sea of red in an area where he traditionally produced. Now Braun is still getting beat by the lower stuff, but he’s not swinging and missing at as many of those high balls. In particular, he’s tightened up against breaking pitches. Over his career, he’s whiffed on around fifteen percent of the breaking balls he’s seen, but now he has that number under ten percent.

Statcast metrics already were in Braun’s favor when he was in his slump. At BPMilwaukee, Sean Roberts wrote that he was underperforming his underlying numbers a few weeks ago, and his numbers have risen even more since then. Braun’s expected slugging percentage is now up to .539, which would be a career high. He also currently has a career high in hard hit percentage (48.2). His exit velocity is 91.9 and barrel percentage of 10.3 only trail his 2015 numbers. He’s a top twenty hitter in both of those metrics. So long as Braun stays healthy, which is always the worry with him, he’s a productive hitter who can hit as well as anyone in the lineup.

The Brewers will spend this week on the road. They’ll have a three-game series in Cincinnati, then go to Washington to face the Nationals. After losing the series finale against Milwaukee last week, the Reds proceeded to get swept in a four game series by the Cubs, allowing twenty-nine runs across the four games. Last week Cincinnati had a team DRA of 5.12 and it now sits at 5.18, comfortably twenty-sixth in MLB. The Nationals have the third best run differential (Runs Scored / Runs Allowed) in the National League but are 7.5 games out of a playoff spot. They’ve underplayed their Pythagorean projection by 7.1 games, which is second worst in MLB.

“I want a ring, it’s as simple as that,” Sabathia told the Associated Press on October 2 as he waited to make what would be his only postseason start with the Brewers. “If I’m healthy and feel fine, I want the ball.” Sabathia was the ultimate team player, and the fact that he was taking these risks for the team and the fans only amplified the cheers at Miller Park. “For a team, a guy going out on three days’ rest shows the importance of the situation and your teammates appreciate it,” catcher Jason Kendall said, “It’s a special thing for a team.”  

Sabathia, inevitably, has become a contrast for the Great Innings Limit Impasse of 2015 between Matt Harvey and the Mets. Reporters have already sought out Sabathia for comment on the issue, who was clear on his absolute apathy on the matter. But the question remains: If Sabathia was willing to sacrifice his body and his future earnings, why isn’t Harvey?

CC Sabathia, who risked his free agency by pitching on short rest in '08, said, "I don't care about what is going on with Matt Harvey."

— Andrew Marchand (@AndrewMarchand) September 6, 2015

It’s an argument that collapses in the face of context. Sabathia was a six-year veteran in his fourth year of collecting multi-million dollar salaries. His fourth-year arbitration award from Cleveland was a cool $11 million and kicked his career earnings up to $36.5 million. Sabathia had already reached the point where the pursuit of money was more about bragging rights and legacies than about purchasing power and providing for a family. Not so much for Harvey, who has yet to make over $700,000 in his three-year career. He’s doing well, but not well enough to keep him out of the labor market until the end of days, which is a problem when you’ve spent your entire life training for a single vocation.

And, more importantly, Sabathia had missed all of 50 days on the disabled list for his career to that point, all from abdominal injuries, not arm injuries. Sabathia neither had to worry about a prior Tommy John surgery. Nor did Sabathia have to consider the fact that his high innings counts would only lead to further scrutiny of his medicals once he hit the free agent market, something that Harvey may have noted when his bosses nixed a trade that would have sent Carlos Gomez from the Brewers to the Mets just over a month ago over a supposedly balky hip.

And to be clear, I think it’s wrong to frame this as Harvey simply making a choice not to pitch. His agent Scott Boras made that clear when he told CBSSports.com’s Jon Heyman, “These are doctor’s opinions… Matt Harvey would love to pitch. But the surgeon who saved his career and other surgeons consulted have said that for maximum safety he is not to exceed 180 innings for the year.”

In a world where athletes need to be in crutches or a sling before fans, coaches, executives and even teammates might believe an injury is real, the right of an athlete to seek out his own doctor’s opinion and have that opinion respected is critical. Just look to the C.J. Wilson situation earlier this year, in which some in the Angels’ organization expressed skepticism that he couldn’t push through an injured arm, even though doctors told Wilson his bone spurs had expanded to “all four sides of [his] elbow.”

It’s not just about facing some undeserved ribbing from teammates. Keith Hernandez discussed the Harvey issue and its intersection with baseball’s labor battles on the Mets broadcast Saturday night:

Well, I don’t know where the miscommunication started here. We’ve got differing sides. You would think something like this would’ve been etched in stone.

Now, as a player, Gary, and speaking purely as a player, I am going to trust my agent and my doctor, in Matt’s case surgeon, as to where I’m at. And I’m gonna go by their advice. I’m not gonna trust management. Marvin Miller and the union fought for a second opinion, for the right of a player to get a second opinion. There’s a conflict of interest with team doctors. And it used to be in the old days, what the team said was it, and you didn’t have an opportunity to go outside. Well, that was a good thing that Marvin did.

Meanwhile, Harvey has been bludgeoned by the New York baseball press, with a number of outlets and writers declaring that Harvey is letting the Mets down or doing the club a disservice. Nothing has made that viewpoint clearer than the New York Daily News with this incisive front page from Sunday:

That backlash hasn’t been limited to journalistic outlets, as Mets fans on Twitter have been vocal with their disapproval. Daily News reporter John Harper says Harvey is aware.

Collins indicated Harvey is "well aware'' how badly Mets fans are crushing him on Twitter. Hinted it could impact his inn. limit decision.

— John Harper (@NYDNHarper) September 6, 2015

If, as Scott Boras said, the medical issue is about “maximum safety,” then it’s understandable that Harvey may want to reconsider. His career is not only about money. It’s possible the adoration and acceptance of Mets fans, the respect of his teammates, the potential glory of a potential 2015 playoff run, and the legacy implications of pitching through fatigue or injury might be worth the risk in Harvey’s head. He’ll have a lot to think about over the next week as he decides what to do for the rest of September (he said through The Players’ Tribune on Sunday that he will pitch in the playoffs if the Mets make it, but he was exceptionally vague about how he and the Mets will handle the final stretch of the regular season).

This is all a huge part of what made Sabathia’s Herculean effort in Milwaukee so special. Nobody forced or coerced Sabathia to take the risks he did in 2008. It was his choice to hoist the team on his back and carry it to the postseason. It’s not just his effectiveness but his effort and his sacrifice that Milwaukee fans recognized with a standing ovation when he returned to Miller Park in 2014 and why Milwaukee’s collective love for Sabathia continues to this day.

But that decision is not management’s to make, and it’s not the fans’ decision to make either. It’s Harvey’s to make, equipped with the best information from his doctors. If the Mets don’t like it, they can either release him or fight the union and try to force him to pitch. Athletes don’t owe us the labor of their bodies, and no matter how healthy Matt Harvey looks, he still doesn’t owe the Mets and their fans his right arm if it risks his health and his future.