Matt Harvey was in the midst of the greatest mound test of his brilliant young career.
He had a 7.20 ERA in his last four starts and had allowed eight home runs during that span.
“Terrible,” was the word he used on several occasions after his start last Thursday against the Giants.
After that start, Terry Collins challenged Harvey to, “find that fire” he had before hitting this awful slump. Something simply needed to change for the Mets co-ace.
And on Tuesday night against a most difficult and challenging lineup in the Toronto Blue Jays, things indeed changed. Actually, they transformed back into what he, the team and the industry were accustomed to seeing.
Harvey allowed just four hits while striking out six in seven innings of work on Tuesday night to earn his seventh win of the year and lowering his ERA to 3.32 in 13 starts over 86 2/3 innings this season.
“Matt Harvey’s back,” Terry Collins exclaimed after Harvey’s brilliant performance on Tuesday.
With that said, Harvey scoffed after the game at the notion he had pitched with anger in his brilliance on Tuesday.
“It’s part of baseball,” he explained. “You’ve got to stay positive and go out and work as hard as you can to fix things and there are going to be adjustments throughout your career and hopefully it’s a long one, so figuring out how to stay out there and get people out is part of baseball.”
When asked by a reporter whether or not his season had reached that critical juncture, however, Harvey ended his postgame scrum with the fire he found on Tuesday.
“I’m not answering that bulls—,” he barked. “We’re done.”
It was a strange ending to an awesome night for Harvey, but as he said, this emphasis is clearly to remain positive and not harp on difficult times. Basball can be humbling, but in order to survive in this game, any player will say they have to leave their demons behind and stay focused and optimistic.
Harvey has clearly made that choice.
Anyway, Harvey featured his classic mid-to-upper-90s fastball on Tuesday, but it wasn’t that pitch which proved to be his key to success. Rather, it was his change-up which helped shutdown the vaunted Toronto offense. It was helpful in particular in the sixth inning when he recorded two strikeouts on that pitch against the lefties.
It was an obvious adjustment Harvey endeavored to make, once which worked flawlessly for seven innings. He threw 17 of his 22 change-ups for strikes, and while the Blue Jays offered at 16 of them, they swung and missed at six of them and didn’t reach base at all against that pitch.
“I think pitching a little backwards was something that needed to be done,” Harvey explained. “Throwing the changeup to righties to keep them off the fastball was big, and definitely helped the outing. I really just tried to work on mixing everything up. And later the fastball was more where I wanted it, I was able to locate that on the outside corner and throw that for a first-pitch strike.”
Knowing he had to go deep into this game, it almost appeared Harvey was pitching to more contact early in this game to limit his pitch count. His one true challenge came in the fifth inning when Toronto had first and second and nobody out, but that’s when he began to power up and started to miss more bats with his fastball. He is so smart and has a tremendous understanding of the game and the needs for the team on a daily basis, and his strategy throughout the night was yet another indication of that.
Nevertheless, it was a big outing for him on an individual level. The four outings prior were in fact terrible, as Harvey put it, and with the Mets strictly dependent upon quality starting pitching on a daily basis, he and the team knew the trend he was setting simply could not continue. At some point, it was time for him to right his own ship put the team back on his shoulders, as he proclaimed he would in Port St. Lucie back in March.
That point apparently came on Tuesday night.
Just Mets 