Matt Harvey has become the new Johan Santana of the Mets, and that is not in reference to his skills or his emergence into the staff’s ace.
Harvey has been lights out all season long, and should have at least ten wins under his belt. However despite his 2.04 ERA, Matt Harvey sits at 5-1 on the year, that one loss coming last night after he allowed just a lone run over seven frames, and could have gone longer.
Although injuries hampered the majority of Santana’s New York career, when he was on the mound for the Mets, he rarely had a great deal of run support. Following his inaugural season in Flushing, his record was a mediocre 30-27 while posting a 3.49 ERA. He failed to win more than 13 games in a season over that stretch from ’09-’12 and for the most part, pitched much better than what his record showed.
The same goes for Matt Harvey in 2013. After the first five weeks of the season in which the Mets young fireballer received an average of seven runs per game of support, Harvey had suffered eight no decisions in his last nine starts before taking the first loss of his 2013 season. Despite going a minimum seven frames ten times this year, he has but five wins and one loss to show for it.
For a hard-nosed player like Harvey, winning is the only acceptable outcome, and to take the loss–especially when he didn’t deserve it–is a devastating blow.
“I needed to put up seven zeros” Harvey told Bob Klapisch of Newsday, and he’s right, he needed to, but he shouldn’t have had to. Harvey limited the best offense team in the National League to just one run, and the Mets failed to match that against a pitcher who had a career ERA over seven against the Amazin’s going into the game.
The offense needs to step up and put some runs on the board for their aces. They failed Johan Santana for the majority of his career when he gave them literally everything he had with every pitch. Harvey has the same mentality in that he leaves everything on the field, he will pitch to the best of his ability until his arm falls off. That type of loyalty, commitment and heart is being wasted when the Mets lineup goes out there and fails to get the guy a single run.
The Mets future rotation is going to have a number of bright young talents in it centered around Niese, Wheeler and Harvey, but their lineup is going to need help, and a lot of it.
Just as disheartening as it is to see the losses pile up for the team, it is just that much worse to see Matt Harvey sit at 5-1 when we know he deserves to be 12-0.
