Fansided

Mets’ Matt Harvey is back, and he’s dominating once again

By Stanford Crissey

facebooktwitterreddit

The Mets’ Matt Harvey looks recovered from surgery and ready to resume dominating

His much-anticipated home debut wasn’t the demolition that optimistic Mets fans may have been hoping for, but two starts in, Matt Harvey looks like he’s back, and before long he could be better than ever.

Harvey, the 26-year-old New York Mets ace, missed all of 2014 after undergoing Tommy John surgery, and some effects of that have shown this season, as he’s looked a bit erratic at some times this season. But at other times, he’s looked completely dominant.

Even in an era where good, and even great, pitching performances have become commonplace, there’s still something special about Matt Harvey’s particular brand of dominance.

Even though it’s no longer a surprise when a successful pitcher returns from Tommy John surgery and is once again dominant–we’ve seen too many of them come back at full strength to be amazed anymore–it’s still refreshing when they do. No one wants to become a Jaime Garcia-type who has multiple surgeries and loses his talent in the process. It was always likely that Harvey would come back strong, but there was always a chance he would join the realm of once-dominant what-if stories like Brandon Webb or Mark Mulder.

Harvey may not be a Cy Young pitcher quite yet, but he has shown enough flashes of his old self that Mets fans can safely feel confident in their “Dark Knight of Gotham,” as they have dubbed him.

Fans came to Citi Field in droves for Harvey’s first home start since September 2013, donning Batman masks and cheering on their ace as he emerged victorious in a sometimes bumpy 6-5 win over the Phillies.

The game was dubbed the “weirdest game the Mets have ever played” by NJ.com, and while that’s some pretty extreme hyperbole, it was an odd game, as Harvey looked dominant at times, less so at others, and the Mets lost two players to injury, including third base mainstay David Wright.

More from MLB

Notably, Harvey hit the Phillies’ Chase Utley with a pitch in seeming retailiation to the beaning of two of his Mets teammates earlier in the inning. The beaning was lauded by some beat writers for upholding the “unwritten rules of baseball,” even though there probably shouldn’t be any rules, written or unwritten, that involve hitting someone with a 95 mile per hour fastball. Or maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, we’re two starts into Harvey’s return so far, and it has yielded some impressive results: 17 strikeouts against just one walk in 12 innings, along with a 98 percent rate of stranded runners that is absolutely impossible to keep up. There are some worrying numbers–his home run rate is significantly higher than it has been in the past–but overall, these are two starts that could only have been delivered by a pitcher of Harvey’s talent.

They equate him with Batman in Queens, but Harvey may need to be Superman for a Mets team that has already lost fellow young starter Zack Wheeler and may be without Wright for some time now. If the Mets are to make good on the expectations of the team’s fans this year, Harvey’s going to need to pitch like a true ace.

The future is certainly bright for Harvey, and the present may be as well, once he works out the kinks. It’s easy to forget amidst all the talk that Harvey went into this season with just 237 innings and 36 starts to his name (some would also point out that he only had 12 wins, but we should know better than to use such a nonsense stat by now). His 2013 was extremely impressive, compileing 6.5 WAR, but here’s the thing: he was just beginning. He’s still on the upswing of his career, and better days may be ahead: many believe that age 27 is a baseball player’s natural peak, and Harvey is 26 now. The best is yet to come from Matt Harvey, and it will be exceptional when it does. In Harvey, we may have a pitcher who can challenge Clayton Kershaw for his “best pitcher on earth” crown before long.

Next: Yankees Fan throws down with Orioles fan.

More from FanSided

Home/MLB