It was a bad day for the worst #HarveyDay the Mets have ever had.
Coming into Saturday’s game, the Mets had lost three of their last four games and had gone 9-11 in May. So, the Mets needed their ace to stabilize things and provide calm for the stumbling Mets, who had received word David Wright was out indefinitely with more back pain related to stenosis just a few minutes before first pitch.
The Mets did not get a stabilizing start from their ace on Saturday.
Harvey allowed a career-high seven earned runs on six hits with two walks in only four innings of work. He allowed four runs to come across in the fourth inning and left his club dusted, trailing 7-1 behind a lights out AJ Burnett and the Pirates.
Harvey felt to 5-2 and saw his ERA rise from 1.98 to 2.91 for the season after Saturday’s ineffective start.
The good news? Harvey said he felt fine, eliminating any concern his issues could be health related.
“Everything was kind of all over the place,” Harvey explained. “I wasn’t locating, obviously. My arm feels fine, body feels fine. It’s just one of those days, where if I tried to spin it, it was over the middle, and if I tried to throw a fastball in, it was away, and vice versa. It was just a pretty terrible outing.”
“This is professional baseball. You leave stuff over the middle, and you’re going to get hurt. I’d like to say it’s not going to be the last time I get hit like that because hopefully I have a long career. I think the big picture is flushing this one and getting back out there tomorrow and preparing for my next start.”
It’s as simple as Harvey surmised. The velocity on his fastball and breaking balls were fine. But it seemed like he missed his spot with every single fastball he threw. When Kevin Plawecki called for one outside, Harvey came in and got torched. When Plawecki wanted it in, Harvey went out and got torched. He couldn’t throw either his curveball or slider for strikes to save his life on Saturday, and that resulted in an early trip to the shower for the Mets ace.
Harvey was making his third consecutive start on regular rest. And while he has grumbled about pitching with extra rest, Terry Collins said the lack of extra rest over the last couple of weeks could’ve factored into Harvey being flat on Saturday.
“He’ll say no, I’m sure. But there’s no reason to think it’s not a factor,” Collins said on Saturday. “You still have to realize he’s first back from the operation. And he’s looked so good. And we just get so carried away that he’s never going to have a bad day, that when he does, it’s shocking for us all.”
Collins is right, and it’s not fair to Harvey. Although, he has created these expectations with the way he’s pitched so far in his career. It’s almost assumed he’s going to be lights out in every start, as he’s given up one run or fewer in 23 of his first 45 career starts. And, as Collins said, as awesome as Harvey has been, he’s still a human being recovering from reconstructive elbow surgery.
There are going to be clunkers like this as he works through the process. It was expected before the season started, but the audience might have forgotten this was a possibility considering he had a 1.98 ERA and was dominant in most of his nine starts leading into Saturday.
It was just bad timing for a bad start, considering what is happening with this team in the standings and in the news.
Just Mets 