Matt Harvey on the Reds is a peanut-butter-and-olive sandwich, so let's dig in

It could work, perhaps. To get to a best-case scenario, you need to start with an essay prompt in a science-fiction writer’s workshop, and you’ll probably include words like “terraforming” and “spin rate,” but Matt Harvey on the Reds could work.

Here, let’s try for one of those best-case scenarios:

Humbled by his fall from grace and energized by a change of scenery, Harvey excels in the Reds’ rotation, with plus command and rejuvenated breaking balls helping him overcome his velocity dip. He’s so enamored of his time in Cincinnati, and so confident in his renaissance, that he signs a below-market deal to stay after this season. He’s a part of the next contending Reds team and an unlikely heir to the Mets-Reds throne vacated by Tom Seaver.

See, that’s not so hard? All it would take is the complete reversal of every symptom and problem that got the Reds and Harvey where they are. Now let’s look at some of the less rosy scenarios.

Computer, show us all of the bad Matt Harvey-on-the-Reds scenarios:

Hmm, yes, if you’ll just ...

Yes, just one more ...

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OK, we’ll just have to use our imagination, then. Because there are a lot of bad Matt-Harvey-on-the-Reds scenarios, and a lot of them can be reduced down to one blanket scenario: Harvey is yet another dinger-besotted Reds pitcher who is painful to watch, except he comes with absolutely no future payoff. With pitchers like Brandon Finnegan and even Homer Bailey, you can at least trick yourself into believing something like, “Yes, this is unwatchable right now. But there’s a chance it’s helping build a brighter future.”

With Harvey, though, there is the potential for extreme just-passin’-through suck, which is the worst kind for a rebuilding team. Mistakes were made. Lessons were not learned. Teams were not improved in the long term or short term. Future wins were not built in any concrete or abstract fashion. There’s just a lot of turning on a three-hour baseball game and turning it off long before its conclusion, upset that you chose to watch baseball on purpose.

If this seems dour, well, it is. But there are reasons for this. The best starting pitcher on the Reds last year pitched poorly enough to remain unsigned this year. The last starting pitcher to post an above-average adjusted ERA for them in a full season hasn’t pitched since 2016. Their most expensive pitcher might be their worst. Their biggest, brightest young starter has a 6.47 ERA in eight starts.

Which is all to say that every last rotational cog the Reds have touched has gone up in flames. And it’s been like this for a while: Since the start of 2016, the Reds’ rotation has combined for 4.4 WAR, according to FanGraphs. It took 28 different seasons to build up those 4.4 wins. A true average isn’t much help, considering that a pitcher who makes two starts has almost no chance to contribute to that total, but you can see the problem. The Reds have made 360 starts since the start of 2016, and they’ve pitched as well as a team of minor-league free agents would be expected to.

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If this reads like, “Newsflash: The Reds haven’t pitched well lately,” I apologize, but it’s important to know the depths of their failure for this. Consider that the Orioles’ starters have been three times as productive during this stretch. It’s easy to build a bad starting rotation. It’s hard to build a starting rotation that isn’t much better than just about every rotation in the International League. The Reds have failed with prospects. They’ve failed with veterans. They’ve failed with righties. They’ve failed with lefties. They’ve failed with power pitchers. They’ve failed with finesse pitchers. They’ve failed with pitchers who didn’t seem to have much to learn in the minors, and they’ve failed with pitchers who needed extra polishing.

They’ve failed with their starting pitchers. Over and over again.

So if you’re looking for a team to shephard along a wayward arm, a former all-star who needs help like few others, it would appear as if the Reds would be the absolute worst fit. More than that, they would be a historically awful fit. There are few teams in any era would would appear to be less equipped to fix a seafaring vessel that’s sprung several leaks. In this analogy, they’re at the airport with Elmer’s glue and a stapler, asking a vending machine for directions to the boat.

This would all be fine, though, if the potential reward were great enough. If the best-case scenario of this reclamation project were a cheap, effective pitcher for years to come, then by all means, go for it. Don’t use the failures of the past to avoid doing anything for the future, and tell people like me to shut up. But with this being close to a cash-neutral deal, it would appear that there are only two possible benefits to this move for the Reds:

1. Harvey has an immediate reversal of fortune, which makes him desirable at the trade deadline.
2. Harvey learns to love the Reds organization and decides to stick around after turning his career around

Both are worthwhile shots to shoot, I suppose. The Reds aren’t getting within spitting distance of .500, so they might as well add cinnamon to the chili and see if it tastes better. It’s just incredibly unlikely to work, and it’s going to come at the expense of a pitcher who would have been much, much, much better off if he were traded to literally any other team in Major League Baseball. This isn’t to suggest that you should feel sorry for Harvey, who really had to work hard at getting designated for assignment, but that you should be scared about his prospects to improve.

Neither the Reds nor Harvey needed anyone else to pile on. I wasn’t planning to publish a “Crikey, the Reds’ rotation is awful!” piece before this trade, and I didn’t have plans for a “Matt Harvey sure looks cooked” article, either. It’s the combination of the two that’s noteworthy. Here’s an immense talent, who needs a Manhattan Project of pitching smarts to get him close to where he was. Here’s a team in the middle of one of the worst three-year pitching stretches in history, with no signs that things are getting better.

This is a science experiment, and we know what the outcome is going to be. It feels rude to watch it with this level of morbid fascination, but I can’t help myself. Matt Harvey is going to pitch at Great American Ball Park for the Cincinnati Reds.

What could possibly go right?

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