#HarveyDay became an afterthought as a result of what ultimately transpired after his departure on Wednesday night. But his performance remains undiminished.
Harvey was brilliant for seven innings on Wednesday, holding the Cubs to just three hits and two walks with nine strikeouts in seven innings.
Harvey threw 70 of his 100 pitches for strikes.
It was a little different program Harvey had on display during Wednesday’s stellar performance. He is known for establishing his blazing fastball, and devastating the opposition with his slider and curveball. However, having such a high baseball IQ and realizing the opposition has begun to aggressively swing at his fastballs early in the count, Harvey started a lot of the Cubs hitters off with sliders and curveballs.
“Good teams are going to pick up on that, an aggressive team like them especially,” Harvey explained. “For us, going into the game, we definitely wanted to mix things up a little bit more and found that it was pretty successful doing that.”
Harvey threw 41 combined sliders and curveballs last night. The Cubs swung and missed and 36.5 percent of them, and they put none of them in play.
He was a pitching artist on Wednesday, finessing the Cubs young hitters with power. It’s something Harvey is probably going to do more of as the league gets more of an idea against him.
He was removed after throwing his 100th pitch to conclude the seventh inning, something which Harvey said he was ok with given how the club is trying to protect him from injury.
“I think the game plan going into the season was to keep everything around 100. I think if I had a quicker seventh, with a little bit less pitches, it might have been a different story. I think it’s one of those calls you need to make as a manager.”
Harvey had made only three starts and thrown 286 pitches since April 19 leading up to his start on Wednesday. There was some speculation Terry Collins might allow Harvey some extra rope given the rest. He’s the ace, it was a really tight game with no margin for error, and he was unquestionably Collins’ best possible piece on the chess board.
“I was fine to stay in,” Harvey said about possibly starting the eighth inning.
But, there was no way he could leave him in, and there was no questioning the decision to take him out, either. Collins has to do everything in his power to protect the Mets most prized possession. In addition, while Harvey is the unquestionable ace of the team, he has historically been ineffective after throwing his 100th pitch – the opposition has a 1.011 OPS in 46 plate appearances against him after he’s thrown 100 pitches.
Again, a no brainer in a tight game. It’s just a damn shame he couldn’t win this masterpiece.
Just Mets 