HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MATT
Harvey continues to look like resurgent ace for Mets after another solid spring outing
JUPITER, Fla. — The black Maserati is waiting for Matt Harvey next to the Mets’ team bus, along with his parents and a female friend. The birthday boy has just finished toying with the St. Louis Cardinals, his command so good early that he used the later innings to simply experiment.
Harvey turned 26 on Friday, breezing through yet another Grapefruit League game as if he never missed a season while recovering from Tommy John surgery. Then he hopped in the sports car with his loved ones, headed for an evening of dinner and basketball. For a guy who spent much of 2014 in a dark place, this rebound is strong.
Anything can happen tomorrow, including unpleasant surprises. But it is worth pausing today to note that Harvey’s return is not just going well; he has been better, stronger, more precise with his pitches, and happier than anyone could have reasonably expected. The Mets’ ace is back.
That thought hit Terry Collins during Harvey’s third Grapefruit League start. Collins expected Harvey to be geeked up for his first game, so didn’t take much from the success. He was unsurprised by a sluggish second outing.
But on March 16, when Harvey devoured a stacked Boston Red Sox lineup, Collins thought: He’s back.
“That’s when I knew I’ve got nothing to worry about here,” the manager says.
Compare Harvey’s progression to that of CC Sabathia, who missed most of last season with a knee injury. Yankees pitching coach Larry Rothschild has said that command is more of an issue for Sabathia this spring than for most pitchers, because he missed so much time.
Usually, because command relies on feel and repetition, pitchers returning from a lost season are like Sabathia, needing more time to relearn how to throw strikes. Harvey? Four and one-third innings on Friday, one run on three hits, five strikeouts, zero walks.
So how exactly is this possible, Harvey pitching as if he didn’t lose a year? I poked my head into Collins’ office after the game and asked.
“Because he’s a freak,” the manager said, and shrugged.
This was meant as high praise, nearly as much as Collins’ affectionate assertion earlier this spring that Harvey is a “prick.”
After this game, the man himself was simply content.
“To know I can throw strikes with everything right now, I’m pretty happy with that,” Harvey said.
But how is this happening so soon?
“I think from the work that we did last year, the bullpens that I was throwing at Citi Field, everything was right there,” Harvey says. “Coming in this year, after taking a month and-a-half to two months off from throwing anything, and then picking up right where we finished off in the rehab, it was pretty surprising, and I was extremely happy with it.”
One nitpick from an evaluator in attendance — and this is a concern I’ve heard expressed in several places this spring — is that Harvey is throwing his slider too hard, ramping it all up too much, risking another blowout. The Mets can only shrug and know that their ace is only able to operate at one speed: full.
This is pitching we’re talking about, so injury concerns are always there. Harvey could hurt his elbow or shoulder, slip on a banana peel, step in front of a bus. So could any of us.
But on this day, the birthday boy was so confident that by the end of the outing he “really just tried to mess around, try new things — right on right changeups, slider in a different count, curveball in a different count.”
It all pretty much worked. Then it was on to the shower, and a brief stop in the clubhouse to tell reporters how wonderful he felt. Then, hop in the Maserati with the family and friend, and wave while fans gathered at the exit, screaming, “Matt! Matt!”
Last year was all about grinding through rehab in muggy Port St. Lonesome, but on Friday, March 27, 2015, it was as good to be Matt Harvey as to be anyone. May we all have an occasional day this glorious, to cut through the work and the suffering.