JABO: Matt Harvey’s Excellent Return
You almost couldn’t dream of a better matchup. Thursday in the capital, Stephen Strasburg went up against Matt Harvey. It would technically be possible to improve on that. Some would suggest Corey Kluber and Clayton Kershaw. Others would suggest Felix Hernandez and Clayton Kershaw. But, on pure stuff alone, Strasburg’s a delight to watch, and Harvey’s every bit his equal. At least, that’s what we recalled. We also hadn’t seen Harvey pitch a major-league game in a while.
Harvey began and ended on a pitch count. He still managed to go longer than Strasburg did, spinning six shutout frames on 91 pitches. I don’t know if there was a single representative at-bat, but I will volunteer this first-inning showdown against Bryce Harper:
- low curveball, 83, whiff
- high fastball, 97, whiff
- high fastball, 97, ball
- high fastball, 97, whiff
In case that one doesn’t do it for you, you might prefer the third-inning at-bat, where Harvey whiffed Harper with a high fastball at 97. Or you could skip ahead to the sixth, where Harvey whiffed Harper with a high fastball at 96. Between Strasburg and Harper, the Nationals have two young stars who’ve generated near-unparalleled hype. Thursday, Harvey out-played them both. It was a rather emphatic way for the phenom to kick off what promises to be an electric campaign.
And the Mets themselves are thinking big things. Bigger things, at least, than they’ve been thinking about the last few years. This year, they want to be a year of transition from finding and developing talent to winning. Like a smaller-scale Cubs, if you will, and, like the Cubs, the Mets think they have the ability to get to the playoffs, even without the injured Zack Wheeler. It stands to reason that, if things go well this year for New York, it’ll be in large part because of what Harvey can do, now that he’s back.
Read the rest on Just a Bit Outside.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
Lotta byline confusion possible with the way this was posted.
What?
The piece is by Jeff Sullivan, but they way they cross-posted it from JABO, it looks like Dave Cameron wrote it.
Never mind, they fixed it.
I would believe that Jeff Sullivan didn’t write it. I mean, Harvey was nasty yesterday. Where are the GIFs?
So how long before the second TJ given Harvey thinks he’s already invincible and is going full-bore? Maybe when he faces a lineup without three position starters on the DL we can draw some conclusions and not an atbat from a guy trying to make up for that…
Thanks Buzz Killinger.
I don’t think this was Harvey going full-bore. He topped out at 97. That sounds fast, but he was touching 100 in 2013. Maybe he can’t throw that hard anymore, or maybe he’s dialing it back just a little bit. He was dominant yesterday, but he didn’t even look that sharp relative to his 2013 peak.
Of course the risk of re-injury exists, but this is a guy who worked hard to rehab for 18 months, not a guy who rushed back after just 1 year.
One minor quibble:
“To an average team, a win costs something like $8 million on the market. To a team in this kind of spot, maybe $10 – 12 million.”
A win will COST whatever the market says it costs… a team may decide that a win is WORTH more or less than that to them based on where they are on the win curve.
Personally I thought he wasn’t even all that sharp. He missed his spots quite a few times, as expected, returning from TJS. He didn’t even look all that happy on the mound with his execution.
Scary.
The above example left out one little detail..
1.low curveball, 83, whiff – outside of the strike zone
2.high fastball, 97, whiff – outside of the strike zone
3.high fastball, 97, ball – outside of the strike zone
4.high fastball, 97, whiff – outside of the strike zone
Maybe one day Harvey might actually throw Bryce a strike in the zone!
Doesn’t sound like he needs to.
I’d rather have someone that throws pitches that look like strikes but are out of the zone and unhittable. But maybe that’s just me…