MUST WIN? MAKE IT A HARVEY DAY
Our wild idea: Give Matt ball over deGrom
It was a drizzly Wednesday in the city with no baseball to distract us, so we got to thinking about a debate that has rolled around Metsland since the beginning of a hypedup season: If the team is somehow able to qualify this year for the wild-card game, who should be the starting pitcher? After watching Jacob deGrom’s Carl Hubbell-esque All-Star inning the night before, our answer is... Matt Harvey. Still him. No question, no doubt.
You can call deGrom the ace of the Mets staff, just like you can call New York a rainforest, after one soggy day. What’s true in a given moment is not always the ultimate answer, and Harvey would be the top
dog of most MLB rotations. That is still his role on the Mets.
(Parenthetical: After the Mets’ six straight losing seasons, and with so many problems in their current lineup, we acknowledge that it is slightly ridiculous to write about the playoffs. But the Mets begin the second half as contenders — that’s the math, no matter how flawed the team is).
This discussion is less about slighting deGrom than acknowledging that Harvey is an elite competitor. DeGrom’s 2015 performance has been better, no doubt.
Harvey, in his first season returning from Tommy John surgery, has a 3.07 ERA. Most pitchers struggle until their second year back from that procedure (Adam Wainwright had an ERA of 3.94
in his TJ comeback season), and while Harvey is certainly beneath his All-Star self of 2013, his results are excellent.
It is a testament to his highly competitive nature that Harvey is haunted by this productive first half. “He thinks he’s pitching bad,” said one close friend of Harvey’s who spoke to him recently. “I’m like, ‘You have a three ERA. What’s your problem? You’re doing really good.’ ”
Asked if Harvey was troubled by missing this year’s All-Star Game while deGrom represented the Mets, the friend said, “Oh, yeah. Definitely. He wanted to be there.”
That’s not to say Harvey wasn’t happy for his teammate — he surely was. But he spent an entire rehab year churning to be The Man again, and this season of adjustments has been a challenge. Such is the price of greatness: Being very good is torture.
But that is also the mentality that makes you an ace. It’s not that deGrom lacks those qualities, but they are clearest in Harvey.
Harvey has also quietly emerged as a team leader this year, in ways that exhibit veteran maturity. While some of the other pitchers groused about Wilmer Flores’ defense during the misguided shortstop experiment, Harvey praised his teammate for the plays that he did make.
When he struggled in games, Harvey turned inward, and worked hard in his between-starts bullpen sessions. DeGrom did the same, but also punched a Gatorade cooler with his pitching hand after coming out of a bad performance. The Mets were lucky that this selfish moment did not sink their season, and that deGrom emerged unscathed.
Harvey is also capable of petulance — he can take his bad moods out on the press, although a fan doesn’t need to care about that — but I have never seen his frustration appear in ways that are destructive to the team. He has been singularly focused on achieving greatness, for years now.
The following is a story we have told before, but it bears repeating here. In spring training of 2012, after he was sent to minor league camp, Harvey lingered on the big-league side for a game against Washington. He changed into street clothes, snuck into the seats behind home plate, Sand pulled the brim of his cap low. tephen Strasburg was pitching, and Harvey had to study him. Team officials noticed, and were struck by a demeanor that seemed to say, “I could do that, too.”
Yes, it is a different year, and much has transpired since. But if a win-or-go-home day ever arrived for the Mets, they should take their chances with this guy. There might not be a pitcher in baseball built better for the moment.