He has become the 2.0 version of Manny being Manny. Oh, that is just Harvey being Harvey.
The Mets insist it is not malice from Matt Harvey, mostly just immaturity or defiance, and they claim the defiance betrays a stubbornness and resolve that will serve him well back on the mound as an ace in New York.
This is spin greater than you will find on Harvey’s slider. Mets officials have mainly mastered the eye roll when it comes to this behavior. But there is a weariness that has set in as well when Harvey, say, was told he could have a few days off after enduring some knee pain during his rehab and — next thing they knew — he had posted an Instagram photo with his buddies vacationing in Cape Cod. During the season. Terry Collins said he talked to Harvey about how bad that looked.
Both Sandy Alderson and Collins spoke to Harvey on Thursday after he did a live radio interview Wednesday that began at 7:15 p.m. — five minutes after first pitch in the Nationals-Mets game. If that were not bad enough, he again seemed in open defiance of the Mets’ slow-down plans for him, especially after fellow Tommy John-rehabber Jeremy Hefner had a significant setback that moved all in the organization to suggest more caution in how quickly Harvey was a) trying to rehab and b) trying to throw the ball.
Yet there was Harvey on ESPN-New York saying he felt he was firing in the mid-90s and still wanted to pitch in the majors this year. Or the two things the Mets have been saying no, no, no, no, no, no to. And thought Harvey understood. Until he didn’t. Until it again appeared as if Harvey and the Mets, at best, have a failure to communicate or, at worst, a substantial rift.
“We have a positive relationship. I would leave it at that,” Alderson told me by phone.
Collins, though, said he implored Harvey, “Stop doing radio shows during the ballgame telling everybody you’re throwing 95 mph. That isn’t going to help us up here.” He also tried yet again to quell Harvey’s quest to pitch in the majors this year by telling the righty: “You have got to understand the big picture. And the big picture is 2015. So back off.”
The Mets describe two Harveys — the one they deal with privately, who mainly is cordial and cooperative, and then another one who seems to be trying to out-Manziel Manziel off the field, out-Butkus Butkus for toughness on it and out-Zuckerberg Zuckerberg on social media.
I like contrarians. I like folks with personality. And, heck, Met fans still revel in the 1986 club, for whom Harvey would probably have been known as “the shy one.” But, really, the message has been sent plenty now, and while Harvey — a Scott Boras client — is probably just biding time until after the 2017 season, he does owe his employers a larger level of respect than he has shown.
It cannot be accepted anymore as accidental or naïve or an act of tenacity when Harvey breaks away from the season or club policy to do his own thing. If he cares about his teammates — as he insists he does — then he should have to, you know, win his 13th major league game before revisiting this level of audacity.
“He wants to here,” Collins told me. “He wants to be a star here. But there is a process to be here, and he has to follow the process.”
But does Matt Harvey care about the Mets’ process?