Oakland Athletics: Matt Harvey’s inevitable return and what it means for A’s top prospect
The recent signing of former Mets ace Matt Harvey has fans buzzing. After an impressive start in Triple-A, have the Oakland Athletics unearthed their next diamond in the rough just in time for playoff baseball?
NEW YORK CITY, NY, November 1, 2015 – A rowdy crowd of nearly 45,000 erupts as Mets starter Matt Harvey struts off the mound after delivering eight innings of shutout baseball in a do-or-die Game 5 of the World Series. He has fanned nine Royals batters and has given his team — and his city— hope that a Mets miracle could still happen.
Matt Harvey wasn’t just a hero to a city that had previously been starved of serious playoff contention since at least the turn of the century; he was christened “The Dark Knight” — a moniker he embraced as he led the Metropolitans out of the darkness of mediocrity.
Two years prior, in his age 24 season, Harvey dazzled to a 2.27 ERA with 191 strikeouts in 178 innings pitched. He was selected to start the All-Star game at Citi Field that year and was considered for the National League Cy Young award.
He ended that season with Tommy John Surgery.
But after a forfeited 2014 season and a year of recovery, Matt Harvey would return to save the Mets. He finished his comeback season with a 13-8 record, a 2.71 ERA, and 188 strikeouts. But those weren’t the numbers that so many people were worried about.
What they worried about were the 189 innings Harvey pitched that season.
Agent Scott Boras was immediately apprehensive of the Mets’ proposed plan to have Harvey pitch around 190 innings in the regular season, in addition to a sizable amount of innings pitched in the postseason. Boras, who was working in the best interest of his client, pointed to the cap of 180 innings that Dr. James Andrews recommended.
But the Mets, and more importantly Matt Harvey, wouldn’t be swayed. He would pitch past that recommended cap and accumulate an additional 26.2 innings in the playoffs that year, bringing him to a grand total of 216 innings pitched in 2015.
In some respect, the Mets’ gamble seemed to pay off.
Matt Harvey was absolutely electric in his World Series start at Citi Field. He was dominating with his signature 98 mph heater, breaking off sliders that were cutting through the zone in the low-90’s.
He had bought into what the city was saying about him. He was the hero that the Mets had been praying for.
He was the Dark Knight.
He also wasn’t happy when Dan Warthen, pitching coach of the New York Mets, came to him in the dugout and told him that his night was done. He was at 102 pitches after eight innings and the Mets were holding on to a 2-0 lead.
Harvey walked past his pitching coach and hunted down skipper Terry Collins on the other end of the dugout, simply telling him, “No way. No way are you taking me out of this game.”
So Collins didn’t.
Matt Harvey sprinted back out of the dugout for the ninth and the crowd exploded even more loudly than they had after his previous eight innings of work. They felt the magic. They waved their bright orange rally towels. They chanted his name.
He would face Lorenzo Cain to start the ninth. Cain worked the count full before drawing a leadoff walk and promptly stealing second. Eric Hosmer was up next, representing the tying run. And he would deliver — taking a pitch down and away to left field, over Michael Conforto’s head for an RBI double that split the lead in half.
It would be the last pitch that Matt Harvey would throw that season.
And without anyone really ever realizing, it would be the last time we’d see Matt Harvey as “The Dark Knight.”
Hosmer moved up to third base on a groundout to the right side before scoring on a ballsy, broken-bat groundout with the infield in.
Had Lucas Duda been able to record the putout at first and make a halfway-decent throw home, this story might have ended differently. But the Kansas City Royals would tie the game up in the ninth. They would take control in the eleventh.
They would win the World Series.