It’s still very early in the season, but Matt Harvey has been everything Matt Harvey is supposed to be. The Mets entered play on Friday night having lost three games in a row—not disastrous, but not ideal—and were up against Max Scherzer, one of baseball’s other very best pitchers. Winning the game didn’t seem like an insurmountable task with Harvey on the mound for the Mets, but a victory was at least not guaranteed.
Both Harvey and Scherzer pitched seven innings before their respective managers lifted them for pinch hitters. Both were very, very good. But Scherzer made one mistake that Harvey did not, serving up a solo home run to Michael Cuddyer in the fourth inning. Both pitchers gave up five hits in their outings. Scherzer struck out ten batters and walked one. Harvey struck out three and walked one, and he didn’t allow any runs.
Both pitchers’ final lines might have looked a bit different if not for some excellent defense. Scherzer hit Dilson Herrera with a pitch—which luckily didn’t injure the 21-year-old second baseman—to begin the third inning, and Kevin Plawecki drilled a line drive to center. Nationals center fielder Michael Taylor made a great play to track it down and catch it, though, turning what looked like it could be a run-scoring double into a mere out.
In the fifth, Curtis Granderson pushed the envelope on a two-out single to shallow left field and found himself safe at second base when Dan Uggla dropped Jasyon Werth’s throw. But he was thrown out the plate trying to score on Juan Lagares’s single to right fielder Bryce Harper.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a defensive highlight reel without a great play by Lagares. Ian Desmond led off the top half of the fifth and hit what sure looked like a leadoff single. There was no way even Lagares was going to catch it, and then, somehow, he did.
There was some poor defense, too. Wilmer Flores made another throwing error on a routine play. Jayson Werth misplayed a ball off the bat of Daniel Murphy with the bases loaded in the eighth inning so badly that all three baserunners scored on what might have otherwise been just a sacrifice fly.
Flores also went 0-for-4 with four strikeouts in the game, and it’s hard not to feel bad for the kid right now. If you’re going to Citi Field and planning to boo him, perhaps consider that he plays for the Mets, and Flores is not the person responsible for Flores playing shortstop. It’s early enough that the experiment might even work out in the long run, but if the bat is never good enough to atone for poor defense and the errors continue to accumulate, the Mets will have to turn to someone else. But again, that responsibility does not fall on Flores.
On a better note, Jeurys Familia might be really, really good. After Alex Torres took over for Harvey to begin the eighth inning and gave up a single and retired Tyler Moore on a fly ball to left-center that was very nearly a home run, Familia came on for a five-out save and retired the only five batters he faced. He looked outstanding throughout, but the highlight of the appearance was when he struck out Bryce Harper on a 98 mile per hour fastball with sink low in the zone. I’m not even sure how that pitch is possible.
SB Nation GameThreads
* Amazin' Avenue GameThread
* Federal Baseball GameThread
Win Probability Added
Big winners: Matt Harvey, +41.6% WPA, Michael Cuddyer, +15.2% WPA, Jeurys Familia, +12.7% WPA
Big losers: none
Teh aw3s0mest play: Cuddyer’s home run in the fourth, +15.8% WPA
Teh sux0rest play: Uggla’s leadoff single in the eight, -9.1% WPA
Total pitcher WPA: +53.2% WPA
Total batter WPA: -3.2% WPA
GWRBI!: Michael Cuddyer