New York Mets right-hander Matt Harvey showed some more signs of righting his season last night in the Mets’ 5-2 win over the Cincinnati Reds. He picked up his second consecutive win and improved his record to 2-3 on the year, while lowering his ERA to 4.76.
Manager, Terry Collins was happy with what he saw from Harvey. “This is the best he’s thrown all year.”
Harvey, 27, pitched six innings, while allowing two runs on seven hits. He struck out a season high of seven while walking one. Matt gave up a homer to Zack Cozart to start off the game, but settled down from there. In total he threw 102 pitches on the night. It wasn’t the dominating Harvey we have grown used to, but it was certainly a step in the right direction.
“I still didn’t feel great the entire outing,” Harvey said. “But overall, I was able to stay in my mechanics better, and kind of attack the hitters the way I normally would, and want to.”
Harvey’s velocity was on point last night, reaching 97 MPH twice for two big strikeouts. He had only thrown two pitches that hard in his previous four starts, but accomplished that feat twice on Wednesday night while working in the 95-96 range – up a few ticks from his previous starts. Harvey’s most talked about pitch during spring training, his slider, worked well for him last night as he struck out three Reds with it, while showing signs of figuring out the mechanical flaw he had early on.
“I think it’s about staying back and letting my arm out,” Harvey said. “Pitching coach Dan Warthen and I have been working so hard over the past couple of weeks trying to figure out what’s going on. We’re moving in the right direction. It was definitely a big positive tonight.”
Yes, a big positive it was. If Harvey can get back to what he was, this team will only continue to be more of a juggernaut. Winning their sixth game in a row last night has propelled the Mets to within one game behind the division leading Nationals. Yes it’s early, but just a few days ago the Nats were slowly building a large lead in the NL East. The Mets have now won 11 of their last 13 games and are firing on all cylinders.
