Our memories of Matt Harvey in a New York Mets uniform will forever be bittersweet because of the way things ended. But when times were good…man, they were good.
The former ace has been in the news a couple times lately — once with an oral history of his rise and fall in Queens, and again with a reported interest in taking his talents to the KBO to revitalize his career. With Harvey being top of mind, I took a brief walk down memory lane by taking a glimpse back at the good ol’ days.
The easiest stroll to take is his 2015 campaign. That’s when he won a career-high 13 games while tossing a career-high 189.1 innings in the regular season, en route to posting a 2.71 ERA and 4.0 fWAR. Before continuing to work past his innings limit to participate in New York’s run to the World Series, I forgot just how dominant he was in 2013 prior to going under the knife for Tommy John surgery.
Following an encouraging 59.1-inning debut in 2012, the right-hander came right back to post a 2.27 ERA and 6.9 fWAR in 178.1 frames for the Mets. That fWAR pitted him second behind Clayton Kershaw‘s 7.2 mark. It was impressive because among the top-five on the fWAR leaderboard, Harvey was the only starter who accrued fewer than 204 innings pitched.
Harvey registered his only All-Star Game appearance in this particular year (which included being named the National League starter) and still managed to finish fourth in NL Cy Young voting despite missing the final month due to injury.
The right-hander’s 2013 campaign got off to a tremendous start in April, too. Through Harvey’s first 40.1 innings, he compiled a sparkling 1.56 ERA and .203 wOBA against with a 30.7% strikeout rate and 8.0% walk rate. His first start of May was no different. Harvey took the mound on May 7th at Citi Field against the Chicago White Sox, which ended up being his most dominant start for the franchise when using FanGraphs’ Game Score statistic as the measuring stick.
Harvey has produced a Game Score of 80 or better 10 different times in his career, but only one has surpassed 90. It was on this particular night against the White Sox, where his Game Score settled in at 101. You might remember this game rather vividly because it was the nosebleed game. Here are the highlights:
And in typical Mets fashion, Harvey got the no-decision here and New York needed 10 innings to get a walk-off victory.
Going back to the right-hander’s performance, he was electric and had everything working. He faced just one batter over the minimum in nine innings and retired the first 20 before allowing an infield single to Alex Rios. The 12 strikeouts he accumulated were a career high at the time. It ended up being one of six times Harvey would punch out 10-plus hitters in a single start. Although four of those occasions didn’t include him allowing a walk, none of them included as many strikeouts as this appearance against the White Sox.
Opposing hitters mustered just a 6.3% line-drive rate, a 50.0% ground-ball rate, and a 25.0% pull rate. His fly-ball rate allowed was up at 43.8%, but that was mitigated by the 6.3% hard-hit rate he posted. This number was easily a personal-best that year on a start-to-start basis, and it began a string of three consecutive starts where the opposition couldn’t get that number above 10.0%.
From the standpoint of pitch value, Harvey’s fastball was at its best. On a per-100-pitch basis, the ol’ number one had a value of 5.86, and while the other pitches in his arsenal shined brighter in other starts, each of them (slider, curveball, changeup) all had a value above 5.00 on a per-100-pitch basis.
There are a number of dominant and memorable starts made by Harvey during his tenure with the Mets. From a statistical standpoint, some of his best happened before he went under the knife for the first time — his top four game scores all came in 2013 before other years start creeping in.
His incredible performance against the White Sox is how I want to remember his time in Queens, though. He was the epitome of a bulldog on the mound — he didn’t let anything distract him from focusing on dominating the opposition, bloody noses included.
The hurler’s exit from the organization wasn’t how anyone imagined it’d go back in 2013. However, no matter how much time passes, it’ll be hard to remove the soft spot in my heart when it comes to reminiscing about “Harvey Day” and exactly what it meant at the start of his career.
