Just Mets

It wasn’t a particularly good #HarveyDay for Matt Harvey and the Mets.

Harvey fell to 7-6 after allowing three runs and seven hits with four strikeouts and a solo home run in only five innings of work to the Dodgers on Saturday.

His ERA rose to 3.11 for the year.

“I had a tough day finding a rhythm,” Harvey explained. “After the first, I was pretty amped up. Everything felt good and fresh. And then, all of a sudden, I kind of got out of whack and really just couldn’t find the strike zone or find a rhythm that I wanted to find. It was a battle. It was tough. It was one of those days.”

It was clear Harvey wasn’t right after the first inning. He walked two batters in the second inning and was all over the place from that point forward. He lost the command of his fastball completely starting in the second inning, so much so he began using a heavy arsenal of change-ups, curveballs and sliders to try and survive on Sunday.

For a while, plan B worked for Harvey, especially when he allowed runners to get on-base. He threw the kitchen sink at the Dodgers to fight his way out of a bases loaded, nobody out jam in the second inning while only allowing a run. Then in the third inning, he then worked out of another bases loaded jam with a steady diet of off-speed pitches, once again because he could not get a feel for his fastball.

But this eventually caught up to Harvey, as he lost the feel for everything in the fifth when he hung a change-up to Adrian Gonzalez and then singles to Yasmani Grandal, Andre Ethier and Alberto Callaspo to make it 3-0, a far too steep of a climb for the Mets meager offense to overcome.

The unusual part about this outing for Harvey was that he was so wild, and allowed five walks in his five innings. That matched a career-high he set against the Braves on August 10, 2012. It was also the first time since that start nearly three years ago he’s walked more than three batters in the game.

The walks kind of summed things up for Harvey on Saturday.

“Our job as pitchers on the opposing team is to go out and last as long as we can and keep the game within reach,” Harvey explained. “Against a guy like [Zack Greinke], three runs is too many, and only go five is unacceptable.”

Harvey was working with six days of rest on Saturday thanks to the club’s latest version of the six-man rotation. He said it was something he believes he didn’t properly prepare for ahead of his rocky start on Saturday.

“With the six-man and then the day off, throwing last Saturday and then this Saturday is tough,” Harvey said. “We’re all having to deal with it. It’s not an excuse why things didn’t go well today. I just have to do a better job of finding a way to get a rhythm throughout an extended period of rest like that.”

The funny thing is, Harvey had a 1.07 ERA on occasions in which he had six days or more of rest in his career. Based on that, the bad start could be just that: a bad start.

But, Harvey has made no bones about his displeasure in public with the six-man rotation over the course of the season. So, perhaps the problem is also mental with Harvey and potentially the other pitchers who have groaned about the six-man rotation. In either case, it seems as though the six-man rotation is a way of life Harvey and all of the other pitchers have to get used to.

The problem with this, again, is while the six-man rotation has good intentions, it is only going to work if the pitchers actually pitch well. If this is the plan, the coaching staff and the pitchers have to make the necessary adjustments, especially if they’re going to use it with an off-day or two through one or more turns.

In Harvey’s case, he said on Saturday he only threw one bullpen session this past week, which suggests he was idle for a second day from a throwing perspective during the last turn.

“Obviously one bullpen didn’t work this week,” he said.

But that’s less on the pitcher, and more on the people who designed the six-man rotation.

After all, Harvey isn’t just going to pick up a ball, run to the mound and throw on his own.