Silverman: Harvey Is Doing His Best To Ruin Mets' Dream Season
By Steve Silverman
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It seems like Matt Harvey is out to make sure nobody compares the 2015 Mets with the 1969 edition of the team.
That's too bad, because there's every reason to believe that Harvey could play the role of Tom Seaver to the hilt if he really wanted to.
Seaver was the leader of the Amazins' remarkable pitching staff that also included Jerry Koosman, Gary Gentry and a perky, young fireballer named Nolan Ryan. That team would come together like few others ever have to beat a sensational Baltimore Orioles team in a five-game World Series, and Seaver was the best of the best.
At the time, many viewed the 1969 Mets as a team that caught lightning in a bottle, and that allowed them to catch and then pass Leo Durocher's Chicago Cubs and then get the best of Hank Aaron and the Atlanta Braves before beating Frank Robinson, Brooks Robinson and the sharp Baltimore pitching staff.
They were lovable and overachieving, and manager Gil Hodges had a deft touch with every strategic move he made. But here's one other thing that the legend doesn't explain: Those Mets were a great team and one of the most underrated in baseball history. They had a sensational pitching staff, wonderful clutch hitting and they could play defense like few others.
The 2015 Mets should be on the same path as the 1969 predecessors. Except they are not, and it all starts and ends with Harvey.
The Mets rolled through August and passed the Matt Williams' Washington Nationals as if they were Durocher's Cubs, and they were laughing all the way.
But just as they were about to start their September stretch drive, the edict from Harvey's agent Scott Boras about the innings limit on the pitcher's tender right arm messed up the Mets' mojo.
Instead of being one-for-all and all-for-one, Boras decided to raise the innings-limit issue because he was concerned about the pitcher's future health and earning power.
That's what agents do, and Boras is probably the best in the world at his job. But Harvey's job is to help the Mets win a World Series. He's the one who writes the marching orders and he should have told Boras to button it up before he ever said word one.
That was on Harvey, and so was missing Tuesday's scheduled workout at CitiField before the Mets took off for Los Angeles.
Harvey missed it, saying he was done in by a traffic jam and that it was his fault. Traffic? Really?
That's the best he could come up with? That's worse than the ninth grader saying that the dog ate his homework.
Harvey tried to come off like he was facing the music after the practice was over and he finally arrived.
"I screwed up. There's not really anything else to say," the big right-hander said. "They know what happened. I told everybody and apologized to everybody and told them it's not going to happen again. It's never happened before. Unfortunately, it happened kind of at a bad time, a mandatory time. Truly, I just screwed up."
Big deal. Everyone else on the team made it without any problem, and many were there two hours before the practice started, but not Harvey.
There's a lot of resentment towards Harvey and there should be.
The story should be how this team has a chance to reprise what the 1969 team did (the 1986 team was a completely different animal) because of a pitching staff that includes Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndegaard, Steven Matz, Bartolo Colon and Harvey.
But instead, the story is about one selfish pitcher who really could care less about his teammates, no matter what excuses he makes to the press or how he tries to explain himself to his teammates.
The togetherness of the 1969 Mets was a big factor in the team's success. That helped them find their greatness and win the first World Series in the playoff era.
The 2015 Mets should have the same thing. It all seemed to come together after the Mets acquired Yoenis Cespedes and he started bombing clutch home runs.
Harvey has thrown cold water on this team, and it's difficult to see them making the kind of playoff run that would turn them into legends.
Follow Steve on Twitter at @ProFootballBoy
