What's going on with Matt Harvey this season has gone from troubling, to concerning, but now I think it's safe to say it sits at sickening for most Mets fans right now. The fact that nobody's got an answer for these struggles is probably what makes it most frustrating. I know the general inclination is to just let him try to work through it and figure out what the problem is, but this is now two outings in a row where the team that the Mets are going to be hitting the shit with all season just lit him on fire. And I mean lit on fire in a way that we're not used to seeing.
I'm not going to try to go in Harvey's head here. I mean, what's to be said? I know he's a competitor, I know this probably kills him and he's probably frustrated as fuck and sick of being asked dopey questions about what the problem is. That's probably why he pulled an Amish Act after the game, although that never works because now, instead of getting subjected to another 5 days of hearing about why he sucks, and how it's because he's too fat, or he's too thin, or his ego is too big, or he's too insecure, or because he pitched to 2 batters in the 9th inning of Game 5 of the World Series, instead we have to hear about how he's an inaccountable schmuck, and really, none of it is anything more than mental masturbation. Talk is cheap. And talking about how Harvey's a jerk is even cheaper. When he was going good, all of this was endearing.
One of the larger problems of this is the societal aspect of Baseball these days. Fans think they're bigger than the game itself and as such deserve to have some inside access. This might be a bit hypocritical of me to say as a Blogger, but as a Blogger I'm just here to call it the way I see it and give some half-baked opinion on what goes on just in case I'm seeing things a different way than the next guy. I don't, however, feel that the players owe me something. I've said it before: I really don't care what Matt Harvey does or doesn't do, or says or doesn't say after a game. It's easy to look at the way Harvey carries himself and pick on some piece of his lifestyle and say, "SEE? SEE? THAT'S WHAT'S FUCKING HIM UP!" as though changing something he does off the field would affect what happens when he's on the mound. Again, unless he's snorting coke or shooting smack, that's probably not where the answer lies.
Like any slumping hitter, you work your way through these things and get yourself back together. It's magnified as a Pitcher because you only get your chance to right the wrongs once every 5 days, and of course it's even more magnified because Harvey carries himself like an ace. It's not as though he wants to perform badly, but somewhere, he hit a wall and now he's got to do the work to get through it. I'm not going to throw my hands and give up because he got torched a few times. If he'd pitched like this his whole career, well, first of all he'd be Jeremy Hefner and wouldn't be here right now, but if he'd pitched like this in 2013 and started in with the whole "Dark Knight" business, we'd have all laughed at him. Right now, picking on him and laughing at him isn't going to do anybody any good. We just have to let him figure this out for himself.
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