Mets' Harvey Will Make Next Scheduled Start
WASHINGTON (CBSNewYork) -- The Mets are going to give Matt Harvey at least one more chance to work his way out of his funk.
Manager Terry Collins said Wednesday that the struggling right-hander will make his next scheduled start Monday against the Chicago White Sox at Citi Field.
Harvey is coming off his third consecutive disastrous outing. In a 7-4 loss to the Nationals on Tuesday, he allowed five runs on eight hits, including three homers, over five innings.
For the season, last year's National League Comeback Player of the Year is 3-7 with a 6.08 ERA.
Collins has indicated he has considered removing Harvey from the rotation at least temporarily, but said Wednesday he wasn't ready to go there yet.
"We're going to get him ready for his next start," Collins told reporters. "And we thought we saw some real positive things early in the game last night. I talked to (pitching coach) Dan (Warthen) at length this morning, talked to (general manager) Sandy (Alderson) at length this morning about what led up to last night's game. And I said, 'This guy's thrown 200 pitches in five days, so when he hit a wall in the fifth inning, I'm not surprised.' So I told Matt about it. I said I was proud of the fact the way he prepared for it, and we saw some positive things early in the game."
What were those positive things?
"Even though his command wasn't good, we saw great movement on his fastball, we saw the velocity up, we saw the tightness of his slider," Collins said. "Those were all things that we haven't seen in the last couple of starts."
Harvey left the Mets' clubhouse without speaking to reporters Tuesday night and declined to answer questions against Wednesday morning.
The Mets are 26-19 and trail the Nationals by 1½ games in the NL East entering Wednesday's game.
