Matt Harvey’s rehab from Tommy John surgery seems to be going fine. Every other part of the process, though, has led to trouble.
Harvey again irritated the Mets organization Tuesday by posting a picture on Twitter of himself flipping the bird to the camera taken right before he went into elbow surgery. This after butting heads with the organization over when he expected to return to the majors and where his rehab would take place.
It came on the six-month anniversary of the elbow operation, and when Mets officials asked him to take the picture down, he deleted his entire Twitter account.
He wasn’t, however, sorry for the picture, which he said was taken by his mother.
“It was me showing little bit of my personality before surgery,” Harvey said in the dugout before Tuesday’s game against the Cardinals at Citi Field.
“I’m not going to apologize for being myself and having a good laugh at a funny little picture, but I’ve kind of had enough with Twitter.”
The team also had a negative response to one of his older tweets, when he wrote “2014 Matt Harvey Day will happen” on March 8, a post he had deleted earlier.
So Harvey had to know the picture might not be well-received by the team, especially given his previous run-ins with the organization, right?
“Honestly, I didn’t think there was anything officially wrong with it,” Harvey said. “You listen to the radio and hear a lot of rap music and things that are a lot worse than what I was showing. It was genuine excitement and a little bit of laughter. To stop the controversy, deleting the Twitter [account] was an easy out of not worrying about it anymore.”
Prior to his explanation, Harvey went through his normal throwing program of 90 throws from 20 feet and said his arm felt “great.”
“The biggest thing is maybe not coming back this year and being healthy, but being healthy the next couple of years,” said Harvey, who has taken notice of the alarming number of pitchers who have found themselves in need of a second Tommy John surgery this season.
“The research is definitely starting to build as to why those guys are going in [again],” Harvey said. “We’re about four months away from any possibility of being back at all. Once that time comes, I think the information will come.”
Harvey said his agent Scott Boras has done studies on the topic in hopes of avoiding a similar fate, which would clearly be more significant than any of the fireworks he has created since he underwent surgery.
Still, this Twitter disagreement was just another sign of a disconnect between the team and its star pitcher, who made headlines when he expressed a desire to be with the team in New York instead of rehabbing the whole time in Port St. Lucie.
It was a sentiment he reiterated Tuesday.
“I love being in New York,” Harvey said. “I love wearing a uniform. The hardest part is not being able to play.”
In fact, that was Harvey’s lone apology.
“If there’s one thing I’m sorry for, it’s not being able to play,” Harvey said.