Matt Harvey will start for the Mets on Friday night as the club opens a three-game series against the Marlins.
Last Saturday against the Pirates, Harvey allowed a career-worst seven earned runs in only four innings, seeing his ERA rise from 1.98 to 2.91 in about an hour’s worth of forgettable pitching for the club’s ace.
After the game, Harvey told reporters he was healthy and just didn’t have it against the Pirates. On Sunday morning, Terry Collins said Harvey’s poor start might be the result of a, “dead arm” period his ace had been experiencing.
Dead arm can easily be correlated to an injury, but it’s nothing more than a sluggish sensation in the arm and upper body. All pitchers go through it one or more times during spring training and the regular season.
It’s something everyone just has to pitch through as there is no magic pill to get rid of the sensation.
Often times, it results in a pitcher feeling like his arm is heavy, making it hard to maintain proper mechanics or finish pitches through the motion. The result might not impact velocity more than it impacts movement, location, and overall command.
Last Saturday, before Harvey took the mound, Mets pitching coach Dan Warthen wasn’t pleased with Harvey’s warm up in the bullpen, and suspected he might throw a clunker.
He did.
“There’s 96 and there’s 96,” Warthen told Marc Carig of Newsday.
But over the course of the week, Warthen and Collins have been pleased with Harvey’s throwing and mechanics and expect him to move past his rocky start tonight.
“I’ve seen that he’s come out of the dead arm,” Warthen said.
Harvey has five full days of rest since his humbling start last Saturday – he is 5-4 with a 2.04 ERA in 12 career starts with five days of rest.
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