Just Mets

For the second time in a row, Harvey Day didn’t end up being about Matt Harvey.

It was the second consecutive start in which Harvey’s pitching wasn’t the story and injuries and other distractions were. Harvey Day was overshadowed by a major injury to his battery-mate, Travis d’Arnaud, and a fellow member of the pitching staff in Jerry Blevins.

Perhaps if Harvey had pitched to the super-human level everyone expects him to every five days, we might be singing a different tune about the dynamic right-hander.

But there was a key reason why Harvey only looked two steps better than a human being on Sunday and not the superhero he’s been so far in his young career: he was very sick, to the point he was nearly scratched from Harvey Day.

“When [Harvey] got here, he said, ‘Listen, I don’t feel very good, but I’m going to pitch. And I’ll go as far as I can,’” Terry Collins explained after the game.

Harvey said after the game his throat hurt to the point he couldn’t swallow anything and had been dealing with fatigue and a lack of sleep leading up to his Sunday start.

“The last two days [I wasn’t] feeling great and today was the worst. Took some antibiotics. Can’t swallow. Felt weak, rundown,” Harvey said on Sunday evening.

Harvey said he was just focused on throwing strikes and getting his team back into the dugout as quickly as possible, but hit a wall in the seventh inning and allowed two runs to come across.

“I think the seventh inning I kind of ran out of gas and just didn’t do a very good job,” he said.

Despite the illness, Harvey had only allowed two runs through the first six innings with no walks and seven strikeouts. But, in the seventh, he allowed three consecutive singles and was lifted for Blevins. He ultimately allowed two runs thanks in part to a wild pitch by Alex Torres, who relieved Blevins after he was hit on the forearm by a comebacker from Dee Gordon.

“Whatever it was, it was a struggle. The next time I need to do a better job,” Harvey said.

That’s what’s so amazing about this guy. He said he felt like the early stages of death for a couple of days due to the illness, yet not even that is an acceptable reason to only be good in one start.

No matter what he says, it’s understandable Harvey wasn’t at his best on Sunday. Yet he still managed to pitch into the seventh inning and did not allow a walk. He has not allowed a walk in either of his last two starts and only one walk in 18 innings over his first three starts. He is now 3-0 with a 3.50 ERA in three starts this season.

Despite not feel well, Harvey still had tremendous stuff. His fastball was up early and Miami was getting some good swings on it as a result, but he was throwing hard and had ridiculous movement on his fastball and change-up in particular. The amazing part about his stuff is he’s able to throw so many strikes despite the movement, and able to keep so many of his fastballs in particular out of play even when he’s not at his best.

He ended up throwing a lot of fastballs on Sunday, which made sense considering he had a big lead after the fourth inning. He’s said over the first two weeks he’s been a little fastball-happy during his starts, which bears watching as he gets healthy and throws some more innings. His change-up has arguably been his most deceptive off-speed pitch as he’s gotten the opposition to swing and miss at 21 percent of them so far this year, so I wonder if he’ll begin to incorporate that more into his repertoire as the league starts to adjust to him.

As far pitching while under the weather yesterday, its admirable he would go out there and pitch knowing he couldn’t be 100 percent. Given how he sounded and looked yesterday, it was remarkable he was as good as he was which, outside of the seventh inning, was pretty ace-like.

But, that’s Matt Harvey. Nothing will ever knock this guy down.