MR. MUTT!
On eve of playoffs, Mets ace Harvey misses workout: ‘I screwed up’
Whether he was stuck in traffic or recovering from a late night out, Matt Harvey admits it “happened at a bad time.”
EMBATTLED Mets ace Matt Harvey struck out with teammates Tuesday when he missed a mandatory preplayoff workout — hours after sources say he downed a couple of cocktails and wine with friends.
Harvey and the team stumbled their way through an explanation, initially blaming the blunder on tunnel traffic. Manager Terry Collins claimed Harvey was excused and that he told the hard-throwing hurler he didn’t have to show up. The comedy of errors continued when Harvey came to Citi Field anyway and suggested he simply lost track of time.
Well, one thing was clear.
“I screwed up,” Harvey said, flipping from the Dark Knight to Mr. Distraction.
“Obviously, today was not the greatest,” he told reporters as the team workout wound down.
“I told everybody and apologized to everybody and told them it’s not going to happen again, never happened before,” Harvey said. “Unfortunately it happened at a bad time, a mandatory time. I truly, I just screwed up.”
Harvey’s teammates were more concerned about baseball than bottlenecks — or any other excuse.
When asked about Harvey’s late arrival, team captain David Wright was clearly miffed.
“I am concerned about the guys who are here and the guys who are here had a great workout, so you will have to talk to Matt about that,” he added.
“We’re rolling, we’re clicking,” Wright continued. “The guys who were here today took care of business and got ready for Friday. I am happy with that. Again. I thought it was a good workout. You can only worry about what you can control.”
Another teammate, who asked not to be named, sounded like he’d lost patience with the young star.
“Well, I can’t say I am happy about it,” he told the Daily News. “I guess we have to wait to see what happened.”
A source told The News that Harvey was out the night before watching Monday Night Football at American Cut in Tribeca. Harvey watched the game with his friends in the underground Morrison Room, where they munched on chicken wings and popcorn shrimp.
“He had a couple of cocktails and a couple of glasses of wine,” an employee said. “He wasn’t drunk or anything. He was out of there by 11 p.m. He was with a bunch of dudes . . . He’s a really nice guy. I think he probably just missed his alarm.”
Harvey ticked off his teammates last month with his innings limit issue, and butted heads with the club in the off season about where he would be working out.
The team workout was scheduled for noon on Tuesday and Harvey arrived just before 2 p.m. He worked out alone.
Harvey’s curve ball comes as the Mets prepare for their first playoff series in nine years. Harvey is scheduled to pitch Game 3 on Monday at Citi Field.
It’s still unclear what really happened before Harvey graced his teammates with his presence on Tuesday. The team appeared clueless.
Collins said that Harvey called him and said he was stuck in tunnel traffic — a statement he appeared to later abandon.
“I got the message (he was stuck in traffic),” Collins said. “Now was someone covering for him? I don’t know and I don’t care. It’s done. It’s taken care of. It’s over.”
Speaking later to ESPN, the Mets manager was sick of talking about it.
“I’m going to tell you what: I don’t know where he was,” Collins said. “(Pitching coach) Dan (Warthen) came to me, and he said, ‘We just got a call from Harvey.’ Now who’s we? We just got a call? I don’t know who it was. ‘We just got a call from Harvey. He’s stuck in traffic.’ End of story. I don’t know where he was.”
Frustration spewed from the manager’s mouth.
“The day went on. I’m thinking, ‘Where the hell is this guy?’ I’ll just tell everybody that I told him to go home and I’ll deal with it tomorrow. So I don’t know where he was. He just told me he f---- up, ‘I was doing some stuff, looked up and it’s 1 o’clock, and said, oh, s---.’ I don’t know what it was. I don’t care.”
Harvey, who lives in the East Village, didn’t shed any light on which tunnel he was supposedly stuck in.
There was a 15% spike in car traffic in the Queens Midtown Tunnel heading east at 11 a.m., compared to the past two Tuesday mornings, according to an MTA spokeswoman.
There was also unplanned pothole work on the Queens-bound side of the tunnel from 11:15 a.m. to 11:35 a.m., creating residual delays, the MTA spokeswoman said.