Just Mets

It took a few minutes for Matt Harvey to find his way on Wednesday night in Miami. But once he found his groove, there was no looking back.

The overall line looks absolutely brilliant, and can easily be considered Harvey’s breakout game and his best start of the year. He allowed just two hits in seven marvelous innings against the Marlins, a team in a ballpark he has historically struggled in, to earn his tenth win against seven losses while lowering his ERA to 2.76 for the year.

But at first, it didn’t seem like Harvey would experience the brilliance he did on Wednesday.

Harvey allowed a first inning double to Derek Dietrich and his fastball velocity was steady in the low-90s.

It was alarming to the audience watching this latest edition of Harvey Day, and to his manager as well.

“I thought something was wrong,” manager Terry Collins said after the game. “I really did. He was [93 mph] and the slider was just ok.”

It’s not terribly uncommon for dominant power pitchers to struggle early in their outings. It’s a main reason why the key to success against these guys is to get to them early before they find their groove.

But anytime something like Harvey’s velocity is off, it raises eyebrows. He is 22 months removed from Tommy John Surgery, he has had a pretty heavy workload in his first year back, and his value to the organization – both on the field and off the field – is bordering on priceless as the team plays it’s first meaningful games in seven years.

But all was well once Harvey found his rhythm. And he seemingly went on automatic pilot for the next six innings, with pure domination left in his trail.

“All of a sudden, in the third inning he got it going and he pitched great from then on,” Collins continued.

“It took me a little while to get going,” Harvey said. “I don’t know if it had anything to do with the Nationals series or what not.”

Harvey attributed his sluggish beginning to this game to simply being a wall he hit as part of the recovery process from Tommy John Surgery.

But Harvey has begun to understand and accept this is just a part of what he has to go through, and is a necessary barrier to breach in order to truly get back to 100 percent.

“Just finding that certain starts are a little bit easier to get going than others is what I’ve been noticing from the recovery,” Harvey explained. “Instead of going away from mechanics, I think I’ve done a good job of staying with it. I think that’s something [Dan Warthen] and I really worked on. T,he starts that you don’t start feeling well, that you really stay focused and throughout the game it will come back.”

There was absolutely no stopping Harvey once he broke down the wall he reached in the first inning. And once the offense clubbed four runs in the third inning to give what has been a rare cushion for Harvey in his Mets career. His slider now looks like the power slider he featured in his magical 2013 season which helped make him the dominant starting pitcher in the league that year.

At one point, he threw that pitch at 92 mph on Wednesday, but he averaged closer to 91, throwing seven of his ten sliders for strikes.

The run support Harvey has had in two of his last three starts is something he isn’t necessarily used to. The club has scored a total of 24 runs in each of his last three starts, compared to 25 runs in the previous seven.

Its because of the lack of run support and the close games Harvey and the rest of the starting pitchers have been involved in which has required them to pitch so deep into their games, thus racking up their innings totals potentially quicker than the club would have liked.

Harvey was not only pleased with the run support he received, but also that the team played lights out baseball in Miami, a stadium both he and the team has historically had trouble in.

“We’ve come down here before and played some tough games and a lot of the times it seems like we’re going home unhappy,” Harvey explained. “For us to come down and do what we did and continue what we’re doing is pretty important and pretty special and we’re not going to stop here. We’ve got more games to go and we want to put the pedal down.”

With the team leading by seven runs after five innings, it seemed like a good opportunity for Terry Collins to save some innings for Harvey as his innings limit (which is believed to be in the 180-200 inning range) is quickly approaching. He is at 140 innings now with about two months remaining in the season. But with an off-day today, it’s clear Collins was allowing Harvey to go the extra mile and finish his spectacular performance.

If Harvey pitches on regular rest and averages seven innings per start, he will have made a total of 30 regular season starts while throwing 203 innings in his first season back from Tommy John Surgery.

It is unlikely Harvey will be permitted to make 30 starts and throw that number of innings.

But the Mets plan to pull back on Harvey’s innings by inserting a spot starter one or more times this month (potentially as soon as next week), and inserting Steven Matz to form a six-man rotation when he comes off the disabled list.

That will undoubtedly keep Harvey under 30 starts and 200 innings before October 4.