Prepare yourself for the Matt Harvey redemption tour
Should the struggles of noted bad boy Matt Harvey change the way we view him as fans?
Watching a once-great professional athlete labor through the end of their career or deal with injury after injury is one of the most painful things fans are forced to confront while watching sports. Willie Mays hit an ugly .211 in his final year in the big leagues, Derek Jeter was one of the worst full-time players in his final season, Ken Griffey Jr. could not even crack the Mendoza Line in 33 games as a 40-year-old and Greg Maddux pitched to a 5.00 ERA while wrapping up his career with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Watching old athletes attempt to match the glory days of their youth is one thing, and fans can resign themselves to the fact that no matter how ugly it looks watching Albert Pujols half-heartedly run out his 25th GIDP of the season, he will always have his prime years to fall back on. The real feelings of sports empathy are reserved to the blazing, young phenoms who see their best years robbed by injuries.
One unlikely figure has emerged as the most sympathetic figure in Major League Baseball — Matt Harvey.
That Matt Harvey could ever be viewed as a sympathetic figure would have been news to most fans just a year or two ago. Despite missing the entire 2014 season due to Tommy John, Harvey lost little life on his fastball or hard-partying ways when he returned to the mound in 2015. He got in hot water over an innings limit with the Mets fighting to make the playoffs and then refused to exit what turned out to be a World Series ending loss. He missed team meetings and showed up late to games after being out all night clubbing.
Things that were tolerable — the cockiness, the sports cars, the nights out with the New York Rangers — when Harvey was pitching well, were no longer looked upon the same way when he began the 2016 season with decreased velocity and scattershot command. Thoracic outlet syndrome, a much different beast compared to the now commonplace UCL replacement surgery, has rendered the 28-year-old a shell of his former self. Harvey is now 9-17 over the past two seasons with a 5.78 ERA and has given up well over a hit an inning while striking out fewer than seven per nine.
It’s impossible to know how the pitcher is internally processing his struggles on the field, but the fall from grace has been hard to watch. Even if you hated what Harvey stood for as a player or his off-the-field misadventures, watching him pitch was flat-out fun. In a rotation full of young studs, he was the most impressive full package.
With two seasons essentially washed away, Harvey is now trying to show he still has a place in the Mets future plans. His first two Spring Training starts have gone as well as could be expected, but we won’t know which version of Matt Harvey the Mets are getting until he makes his first real start of the regular season. Harvey’s velocity is sitting in the low nineties for now, an obvious drop from the 96.4 mph he averaged in his last full season, but his approach to pitching has matured.
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For his part, Harvey now appears more thoughtful when dealing with the media and has toned down his personal life. Rooting for this more mature version of the pitcher is infinitely easier. Personal growth is a hard thing to come by for many professional athletes — giant man-children given free passes for many bad behaviors their entire lives — but Harvey is attempting to make strides as a human and as a baseball player.
That is commendable on many levels, and it’s why rooting for Matt Harvey should be one of the easiest calls for MLB fans this year.