Matt Harvey is Throwing Again
...which means it's again time to wax poetic about Matt Harvey...
Matt Harvey’s big-league career began in 2012, peaked with a borderline Cy Young performance in his sophomore season, hit a slight speed bump when he had to miss all of the 2014 season recovering from Tommy John surgery, and then skidded off course in 2016 when he was diagnosed with thoracic outlet syndrome.
He once strode toward the mound a competitor at the start of that deciding fifth game of the 2015 World Series, heroically embracing the “Dark Knight” moniker Met fans bestowed upon him.
Not even three years later, he was in DFA limbo after refusing an assignment to the minor leagues.
Doctors had to remove a rib to relieve pressure on the nerves and vessels in Harvey’s right arm. This is no different from any other procedure conducted on thoracic outlet patients who intend to continue throwing baseballs at ferocious speeds, but he still lost a rib. And he’s been a fraction of the pitcher he once was ever since.
Now a free agent for a third straight offseason, the former ace continues to put in the work towards returning to the majors, and seems to have something else to show those who may have otherwise written him off.
A couple of videos from the Baseball Performance Center in South Jersey give us a glimpse at a soon-to-be 32-year old Matt Harvey throwing a workshop bullpen with a built-in Trackman system.
He’s sitting a tick under 90 mph, but high intent and velocity are secondary in most grip and movement workshops.
The data on the tablet application has the velo figures stashed at the bottom of the screen, beneath the main attraction. The objective of the showing is to improve the vertical and horizontal carry on his fastball. The results themselves are pretty encouraging.
These robotic, nonsensical calculations that take the human element out of the game are telling us how high Harvey’s four-seamer can climb the ladder and how deep his sinker can bite.
It’s merely the kind of stuff we’ve been listening to Ron Darling talk about on broadcasts for over a decade, and it’s more in-line with the stuff Harvey himself was able to show us at his peak. As the heatmaps can attest, higher fastballs are better.
In a matter of three days of work, Harvey has evidently recaptured the vertical fastball movement of yesteryear, increasing carry movement by another 50 percent of what it’s been in the last three seasons (from 12 to 18 inches).
His sinker, which he didn’t even bother throwing in Kansas City, also looks to be improved in terms of horizontal, arm-side action (now 19 inches).
Harvey and the Baseball Performance Center’s quest to put a process together is only beginning. Where things end up is anyone’s guess so early on, but it’s still fun to imagine what the best-case scenario may look like, given the subject matter.
Harvey’s post-TOS timeline following his prime years (2013-15) is one Met fans are all too familiar with: 2017 was a nightmare, and 2018 unraveled in a matter of weeks.
The Mets ultimately shipped him to the Reds that May when he failed to adjust to a mop-up role out of the bullpen.
Matt showed enough promise in Cincy to secure a cheap, show-me deal with the Angels for 2019, but was promptly hit harder than ever before (7.09 ERA, 6.35 FIP in 12 starts), and was a free agent by June.
The Athletics gave him a few games in Triple-A, but never promoted him. He latched on with a nothing-left-to-lose Royals club in late-July 2020, allowed six homers in seven appearances, and is now back at the drawing board as a free agent.
The general Statcast takeaway is that despite keeping his velocity in league-average range across the last five years, the spin on Harvey’s fastball has suffered, bottoming out at the 29th percentile in 2019 (the last year in which data on the righty is available).
Teams had been taking fliers on Matt less enthusiastically through the years, and the trend on the field has been pretty disheartening.
It’s not a guarantee that his work in Jersey gets him a contract without the typical larger-scale showcase in front of scouts, or at least some tape against actual batters. He’s already spoken on a few occasions about his falling out in New York, and there isn’t any reason to think terms have improved between him and either Sandy Alderson or the media market itself.
In the aggregate, what we are looking at is a pitcher who has pitched in four different organizations across three years, grappled with injuries and ineffectiveness across five, and despite only achieving tangible success in two-and-a-half, still hits an emotional chord with Mets fans.
It’s me: I’m “Mets fans.”
I, for one, have never given much thought to a reunion anyway. I’m at peace with the fact that Matt Harvey doesn’t want to be the Dark Knight anymore.
We should do our best to embrace change, however painful or disruptive it may be.
Deep down, though, it’s still awfully sobering to consider just how far the chips have fallen. Even between his first starts in Queens in 2017 and 2018, and again once he debuted in Anaheim, the narrative door for Harvey coming back to stay still revolves.
Surely, folks still remember when the former ace first took the mound as a Red and held a potent Dodgers offense to just one hit in four innings. I refuse to believe I’m the only Met fan who had been checking box scores from Harvey’s starts as an Angel.
There must be another fan/fan club that used some of the quarantine downtime this past summer to stream an inning or two from one of Harvey’s starts with Kansas City… just for a taste.
On at least one occasion when I’d tune in, Matt would hit 97 mph - sometimes higher - to a swing and a miss. When this would happen during his final days as a Met, I’d ponder a scenario in which he could revert to that sort of heat every time, all the way up to a triumphant return to an orange and blue playoff game.
With the Royals, it merely spelled potential for a good game that could keep him in the rotation for another week, but the impulse (or, depending on who you are, delusion) of possibility is just as strong.
The thought of a fallen star rising from the ashes still crosses my mind when I think about Matt Harvey, however far out of the picture it seems to be at this stage in his career.
Looking at the heatmaps is kicking those whims into another gear.
The first batch of data here suggests it may not be far out. Perhaps this really is Harvey’s last chance at being considered a major-league caliber pitcher.
The counterargument, of course, is that at 31 and on the fringes of a weak Royals roster, Harvey’s bus pulled out of the station in 2020. Some would probably insist this was inevitable once he underwent the thoracic outlet procedure five years ago.
I don’t really see a reason to argue what’s possible or not on the basis of Matt’s first data workshop anyway - not because of the low velo, or the fact that it’s only day three, or the past results, or even beyond that and into the future.
I’d simply rather imagine. There’s more sentimental value in that, after all. I'll always hold out hope that like all good things that suddenly come to an end, this one just may come back around. It’s part of what being a Mets fan is about.
Very thoughtful article. I think it'd be a tremendous story to see Harvey pitch well again somewhere.