THE ITALIAN JOB
After stealing WBC spotlight, Harvey declares: ‘I can still pitch’
ERSTWHILE Mets legend Matt Harvey has experienced very high highs and just-aslow lows in baseball, and sometimes the highs and lows run together, as they did during the 2015 World Series. But through it all, Harvey — the surprise star of Team Italy at thw WBC — has persevered with his pitching. If he’s no longer hitting triple digits, he’s intent on writing a happier final chapter to a career that once promised untold riches before it was derailed by injury.
A humbled Harvey reinvented himself with hard work and determination. With a fastball that’s now in the 89-91 mph range and a varied pitch mix, Harvey shut down Cuba and the Netherlands in pitching his Cinderella team into the quarterfinals of the WBC before Italy lost to powerhouse Japan. He threw seven innings of one-run ball, stifling some very good hitting.
“Obviously I’m not pumping mid-to-upper90s anymore — at least not yet. Hopefully, the velo comes back. But if it doesn’t, I feel like I still know how to pitch and to get guys out,” Harvey told The Post from Japan. “I’ve worked really hard on a different style of pitching. I feel good. Hopefully the stuff comes back. But I can still pitch. The game is still about getting people out.”
The velocity may not be back. But the control certainly is. “I could have thrown it into a tea cup,” Harvey said about his pinpoint accuracy.
Harvey’s still only 33, but the trendline and a rough 2022 work against him. He spent last year, first suspended after testifying with immunity in the tragic Tyler Skaggs case that he used cocaine and once got Percocets for Skaggs, then in the minors with Baltimore, where he pitched pretty well before tiring.
Harvey surely has regrets, and while he declined to discuss his court appearance, he did have a regret (actually two) about the 2015 World Series, the year before a devastating thoracic outlet injury derailed his career. Memorably, he successfully campaigned to stay in Game 5 after manager Terry Collins told him he was done following eight brilliant innings, with the Mets leading.
He might also have to wonder about his innings load (216 innings) in that comeback year following Tommy John surgery. The Nationals shut down Stephen Strasburg, and while both pitchers wound up requiring thoracic outlet surgery, Strasburg didn’t need it until a decade later, after he’d won a World Series MVP and signed a $235 million contract.
Harvey didn’t get into that speculation. But he did have a couple of regrets about Game 5.
“It was raw emotion. The only thing I thought of was to bring a championship home and keep it going. I got fired up. The crowd got fired up. One of those emotional things that’s tough to [harness] when you’re cruising,” Harvey said. “It was an emotional game. It was hard to say no. Now at my age I probably wouldn’t have caused an emotional scene. As a more mature self, I would have handled things differently.”
And, oh yes, he did have one more regret. It was throwing an offspeed pitch to Lorenzo Cain, a pitch that had fooled Cain earlier in the game. But in the ninth, Cain took the pitch and walked, setting the stage for the Royals’ Series-winning comeback.
“I wish I had pumped a fastball in there and challenged him a little more,” Harvey said. He doesn’t have 100 mph anymore. But he still can be effective says Italy’s pitching coach Mike Borzello, the longtime Yankees and Dodgers coach and master game strategist for the historic 2016 Cubs. Harvey has a fourseamer, a two-seamer, curveball, slider, changeup and cutter. “He has enough of a pitch mix to attack a hitter’s weaknesses,” Borzello said. “He can throw anything at any time. No reason he can’t do what Zack Greinke is doing. Same pitch mix. Same velocity, same pitch ability.” There has been one WBC surprise success story already. Nicaraguan pitcher Duque Hebbert, 21, signed with the Tigers after one brilliant inning in which he whiffed Juan Soto, Manny Machado and Rafael Devers. Harvey, hoping to be the second, said: “He’s a little younger. I definitely worked as hard as I can to be in that position. Hopefully someone gives me a chance.”