New York Mets: Matt Harvey at a Career Crossroad

New York Mets pitcher Matt Harvey has seen the ups and downs through his career. How will he respond to a disappointing season shortened by injury?

We’ll never know the effect of Terry Collins‘ decision to send Matt Harvey out to pitch the ninth after eight stress-filled innings in the final game of last year’s World Series—or the effect of a record 220-plus innings he pitched following Tommy John surgery—or why the hype has never mirrored his performance with a 29-28 record in four big league seasons.

No, we’ll probably never know or understand these things.

But, here’s what we do know.

Harvey’s major league career is at a crossroad. His ability to wade through the mental challenges that lay ahead will be more important than his motivation to bounce back physically from this year’s season-ending surgery. The former will determine his career path going forward.

Harvey burst onto the New York scene when the Mets won nothing. They were a franchise in dire need of new life and good press. Calamitous trades and free-agent signings such as Jason Bay and Bobby Bonilla, who still receives a check from the organization on July 1 every year for $1.1 million through 2035, helped create an image depicting a hapless franchise searching for a clue in an attempt to find a winning formula.

In the beginning, Harvey had all of the right stuff. He packed the ballpark each of his starts and gave the franchise hope.

Like Noah Syndergaard and Jacob deGrom today, you wanted to tune in because something special might happen. The media played it up, and Harvey soaked it all in.

There was always something about Harvey that suggested somethings wasn’t quite right – and it’s had nothing to do with his pitching

There was an inkling that something just wasn’t quite right. With his awkward attempt to announce himself as the second coming of Derek Jeter and his propensity to show up on Page Six, he succeeded in showing that his mind was often elsewhere.

As a result, his on-field performances displayed inconsistencies.

Also, his propensity to do foolish things like taking a photo op raising “that finger” to the camera while in a hospital bed following his Tommy John surgery—or his ill-advised threat that he would not pitch more than 180 innings in the playoffs last summer raised concerns.

It was a statement that left many of us wondering if the Mets had a head case on their hands.

Next: New York Mets: 2016 First-Half Awards

We can be sure that the Mets will stand behind Harvey, and the decision-makers will anoint him as the ace of the staff when the season opens in 2017. But, that is all we can be sure of in the near future. From that point on, it’s all about the business of baseball and the bottom-line measure. What have you done for me lately?

He’s too good to write off now and maybe Stephen Strasburg is giving him a lesson or two in how to handle adversity, but we won’t know for sure until Harvey shows us who he really is on the pitching mound.

Here’s Tom Verducci’s take on what went wrong.

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