Well, there are some days when Matt Harvey will show up to the ballpark and be human. Tonight, unfortunately, was one of those nights and we could tell from the beginning. Our resident ace had trouble locating all of his pitches, although his fastball still had tremendous late life and a high velocity. He hung a lot of his breaking pitches and they just didn’t have the same break they normally did. Honestly, he was due for a tough start, and four runs in six innings is basically the worst you’ll see from Matt Harvey. He only induced five swings-for-misses throughout the entire start. According to Ron Darling, it snaps a streak of 26 games where he had 10 or more swings-for-misses.
He allowed a pair of runs in the fifth when Nick Punto ripped a two-run double, and a pair of runs in the sixth off a A.J. Ellis two-run single. He walked two batters in this game, after walking just one other batter since the all-star break. Harvey’s ERA rises to 2.23.
Of course, since he is bound to have these starts every now and then — and mind you they are barely “bad” — the Mets offense needs to step up to back him up. So what did they do? …A Juan Lagares solo home run in the first inning and a subsequent seven innings without a run? Yeah, that’s what happened… It was a tough game to watch. The Mets teased us in the ninth, when a John Buck RBI single brought Ike Davis to the plate with the tying run on first — but he broke his bat and grounded out to second to end the game. Opposing pitcher Ryu did look pretty good against us today, so it might not have been completely our fault. No Met had more than one hit, and only Lagares had an XBH.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention a nice catch by Daniel Murphy early in the game to start a double play — almost identical to the jumping catch he botched yesterday, so nice job. Also, Gonzalez Germen looked spectacular in his inning of work. His change-up was dropping off the table.
Dillon Gee has been cruising recently and he takes on Chris Capuano as the Mets look to avoid the sweep against the Dodgers tomorrow.
