Series Preview: New York Mets @ Milwaukee Brewers

Coming off a largely impressive -- save for the very last inning -- series against the Boston Red Sox, your Milwaukee Brewers will look to secure a winning homestand with a weekend series against the New York Mets.

If you don't follow the soap opera that is the New York sports scene, the Mets are, well, currently being very Mets-y. Noah Syndergaard recently went down with a torn lat muscle that happened after he refused to get an MRI on his shoulder and the club decided not to make him do it anyway. Yoenis Cespedes is on the DL with a hamstring injury that was made worse as he tried to play through soreness. Oh, and Matt Harvey is coming off a three-game suspension for going on a bender after seeing his supermodel love interest spend some time with her ex-boyfriend. We've all been there, Matt.

The latest malady? Jeurys Familia was diagnosed with an arterial clot in his right shoulder and could be out for the season. This was the front page of the New York Post this morning:

Despite all of that, the Mets come into Miller Park as winners of their past 4 series, inching closer to .500 after a brutal 1-10 stretch in mid-to-late April.

A lot of that has to do with Michael Conforto, who is finally getting a chance at consistent playing time with Cespedes on the shelf, and -- ugh -- Jay freaking Bruce.

Yes, Bruce is making his return to Miller Park. Hide the children. He's hitting .283/.364/.591 with 10 home runs in 32 games. By my calculations, if he's hitting that well against non-Brewer teams, he's due for about 5 home runs this weekend against the Brewers. We'll see. Conforto, on the other hand, is hitting .337/.430/.652 with 8 home runs and 4 doubles in 89 at-bats.

Probable Pitchers

Friday, 7:10 p.m. CDT, FS Wisconsin - Matt Harvey vs. Matt Garza

Harvey's bad weekend off the field probably wouldn't have been such a big deal -- and led to a timeout from the team -- if he was actually pitching well this year, but he's a far cry from the guy who burst onto the scene and started the All-Star Game in 2013. He's not even the same pitcher as the one who returned from Tommy John surgery in 2015 to help the Mets win the NL Pennant. In 6 starts this year, he's been hit for a 5.14 ERA which is actually better than it should be (5.77 FIP). His K/9 is an abysmal 5.1 and he's carrying a 20/13 K/BB rate in just 35 innings. He simply hasn't been fooling anyone this year, although his earned run numbers might be inflated by back-to-back 6 ER starts (he allowed 2, 2, 1 and 3 runs in his first 4).

Saturday, 6:10 p.m. CDT, FS Wisconsin - Robert Gsellman vs. Zach Davies

If you didn't know, Gsellman was the guy who went all of last season without actually swinging the bat, due to a tear in his (non-pitching) left shoulder. You should really read Sam Miller's piece on it. Unfortunately, the pitching thing hasn't worked out well for him to this point in the year, either, despite being one of the Mets' best prospects heading into the season. In 31.2 innings (6 starts), he's carrying an even worse ERA than Harvey (6.54), although he's been a bit more unlucky (4.89). He's allowed 42 hits in 31.2 innings -- 11.9 H/9 -- but with a 58.2% groundball rate, more of those should be going for outs. But when you have Neil Walker, Asdrubal Cabrera and the corpse of Jose Reyes in the infield, you're not going to get much help.

Sunday, 1:10 p.m. CDT, FS Wisconsin - Jacob deGrom vs. Wily Peralta

Like much of the Mets' pitching staff, deGrom has seen some rough results to start the year, at least by his standards. He comes into this series with a 3.80 ERA in 7 starts, but that's inflated by an unusually high 17.1% HR/FB rate for him -- leading to a much lower FIP of 3.38 and xFIP of 2.92. Still, that HR/FB rate isn't likely to improve too much with a stop at Miller Park. It's also worth noting that deGrom has basically been a 3TO pitcher to this point. Aside from the home runs, he's struck out 12.66 (!!) batters per 9 innings while walking 4.01 (!!) per 9. Not exactly the epitome of efficiency. Which, hey, speaking of, Wily Peralta takes the ball on the other side. We might spend a lot of time talking about what it would take for the Brewers to trade for deGrom while both guys take 95 pitches to get through 5 innings.

Statistics courtesy of Baseball-Reference and Fangraphs