Aug 01 2013 07:12 PM
Must be all that South Beach supermodel hounding....
Despite Poor Numbers, Miami Also Has Harvey’s
By ANDRE C. FERNANDEZ
Published: August 1, 2013
| MIAMI — Matt Harvey has mystified plenty of hitters throughout his 2013 All-Star season. But a victory against the last-place Marlins, the worst-hitting team in baseball, continued to elude Harvey, the Mets’ ace, on Thursday afternoon. Harvey looked like his usual dominant self for five innings, holding the Marlins to one hit on 79 pitches, 52 of them strikes. But with the Mets unable to back up their starter with any runs of their own, Harvey unraveled in the sixth inning, which led to a 3-0 loss at Marlins Park. “It’s not like I take this team any differently than any other of my starts,” Harvey said. “It just happens that this team finds a way to squeeze out some runs.” The Marlins, who entered the game with a major-league-worst .231 batting average and 241 runs, broke the scoreless tie with three runs on four hits in the inning to come out with a split of the four-game series. For only the third time in 22 starts this season, Harvey failed to complete six innings. All three of those starts have come against the Marlins at Marlins Park. “Matt certainly deserves a better fate than he’s had,” said Terry Collins, the Mets’ manager. “The teams that are a little more aggressive swing and miss,” Collins added. “These guys don’t swing and miss. They put the ball in play. They hit the ball to all fields, so they’re a little tougher for him.” Harvey did strike out eight Marlins and walked none, but he lasted only five and two-thirds innings, giving up five hits and hitting one batter. In four starts against Miami this season, Harvey is 0-1 with a 3.52 earned run average. Harvey is 8-2 with a 1.98 E.R.A. against everyone else. The Mets fell to 5-10 against the Marlins this season. “You can get to that point in the game and you can see his ball start to come up,” Collins said. “He had two or three sliders that didn’t have much depth to them. One of the things we’re trying to get him to understand is that he works so hard and throws so hard that late in the game, sometimes it’s easier for him if he gets easy outs early on. When you see his breaking ball flattening out, he’s running out of gas.” Marlins pinch-hitter Juan Pierre and the rookie left fielder Christian Yelich led off the sixth with back-to-back singles to put runners on first and third. Harvey almost worked his way out of trouble, recording outs by getting Adeiny Hechavarria to line out to short and striking out Giancarlo Stanton. But first baseman Logan Morrison lined an 88 mile-per-hour changeup to right field to score Pierre. “My job is to go out and put up zeros regardless of whatever is going on,” Harvey said. “I’m going to say that until I’m blue in the face. Obviously I didn’t do that today, and I’m not happy about it.” After Harvey hit third baseman Ed Lucas on the next at-bat, Marlins second baseman Donovan Solano fouled off five pitches until finally hitting a single to right that scored two more runs, finishing Harvey’s afternoon with the Marlins leading, 3-0. “I wasn’t able to make my pitches when I needed to,” Harvey said. “The ball came up, and I left it over the middle quite a bit. It was just one of those days it happened in the sixth inning. Other times I’ve been able to work through it.” The Mets wasted a few chances to give Harvey an early lead, leaving nine runners on base through the first six innings. Justin Turner, who started at second for Daniel Murphy, delivered a two-out single in the third inning as the Mets continued to work high pitch counts off Koehler, who was not nearly as efficient as Harvey, yet managed to keep the Mets off the board. The Mets loaded the bases in the third inning after David Wright drew a walk and Marlon Byrd was hit by a pitch. But Ike Davis continued his season-long struggle, leaving the bases loaded by popping up in foul ground to third baseman Ed Lucas. Davis also came up with runners on first and second and two outs in the top of the first,“We’re just not driving in runs and we have to figure out what we’re doing here,” Collins said. “If we knew what it was, we’d fix it. We’re not driving them in. There’s nothing wrong with our approach. We’re not putting good swings on pitches we can hit. We’re fouling pitches off we should be hitting.” |
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/02/sport ... rlins.html