New York Mets starting pitcher, Matt Harvey was unable to get the job done in Friday’s 5-1 loss to the Atlanta Braves. After three consecutive impressive starts,Harvey faltered against the worst offense in the National League.
Harvey pitched six innings on the night while allowing four runs. He gave up seven hits while walking two and striking out five. It was the fifth time this season he’s allowed more than four runs and the first time since May 24th at Washington, when he allowed five.
“It’s one of those things where you’re up in the zone and you leave balls over the middle of the plate,” Harvey said. “Sometimes you get away with it, sometimes you don’t, and they were aggressive from the beginning.” (NY Post)
Harvey took the loss, his ninth of the season as his record fell to 4-9 in the 2016 campaign. His ERA rose just a bit as to 4.76 while his WHIP on the season landed at 1.39 after Friday’s loss. Harvey left a lot of fastballs up in the zone Friday night, and the young Braves took advantage of it quite often.
As usual with a Harvey start, the offense provided no support for their starting pitcher, scoring just one run. It was the 34th time in Harvey’s 79 career outings that the Mets have scored two runs or fewer. Harvey is 1-19 in those 34 games with a 2.60 ERA.
The most important thing after this loss is to make sure that Harvey does not regress to the pitcher we had seen earlier in the season. Hopefully this is just a blip on the radar in a long season as those will come to any pitcher at any time during the long campaign. Manager, Terry Collins knows how important it is to keep Matt on track.
“Certainly we’ll continue to make sure [Harvey] stays positive, but I don’t think it should affect him,” Collins said. “He’s been pitching too good.”
Staying positive being the key. The Mets cannot afford to see Harvey regress yet again to the pitcher he was earlier in the season as the rotation has finally seemed to click and coming into form. Hopefully this is just one bad start with another strong performance on the horizon.
