Written by Andy Kent at New York Times.com
It was a classic pitchers’ duel from start to finish on Sunday afternoon, and while Matt Harvey came out on the wrong end of a 1-0 score against the Miami Marlins’ Jose Fernandez, he still had a good deal to feel positive about.
Harvey matched the fiery Fernandez for seven solid innings in what was his second straight strong start in a season that, until now, had been full of struggles. He allowed just one earned run and four hits, with three strikeouts and no walks, almost duplicating the seven shutout innings he threw against the Chicago White Sox last Monday, on Memorial Day.
“It’s still two starts; and obviously, the massive struggles that happened before, the only thing you want to think of is not letting that kind of creep back in,” said Harvey, who is an unbecoming 4-8 on the season but no doubt in a better frame of mind than he was a week ago.
Or, as he put it to reporters after the game, “Feeling pretty good is definitely a positive.”
It was Harvey’s bad luck that Fernandez was just a little bit sharper on Sunday, matching his career high with 14 strikeouts over seven innings and allowing just four hits on 100 pitches, 73 of which were strikes. Harvey was almost as precise, with 70 strikes across 104 pitches.
Fernandez improved to 9-2 this season and is on a roll. Harvey has definitely not been, but he still has much of the season to truly turn things around.
Fernandez and Harvey made for an intriguing matchup. They share the same agent in the formidable Scott Boras and have had a similar career arc — right-handers who displayed dominance early on, only to succumb to injury and have to work their way back after Tommy John surgery.
Harvey’s only real mistake Sunday came in the bottom of the fifth, when he left a pitch up in the strike zone that Miami’s Derek Dietrich smacked for a double off the fence in center field. Marlins catcher J. T. Realmuto then drove in Dietrich with a single up the middle on a 2-0 pitch, giving Fernandez all the support he needed.
“You don’t want to give up a run in a tight ballgame like that,” Harvey said. “But I left a pitch over the plate and he got on second and then I made a pretty good pitch to Realmuto and he hit it up the middle. In that situation I wanted a ground ball, I got it, it just wasn’t at somebody.”
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