JUPITER, Fla. — The crowd that watched Matt Harvey’s second spring start Wednesday included an interested bystander in a No. 16 Marlins uniform.
Jose Fernandez sat near Miami manager Mike Redmond on a bench to the right of the Roger Dean Stadium home dugout. He said he wanted to watch, curious to get a glimpse not just at Harvey, but his own near future. The duo shares much in common — a division, genius in their right arms, an agent and Tommy John surgery.
‘We’ve chatted some about [rehab],” Fernandez said.
Harvey endured Wednesday what he called sluggishness in a second start that lacked the adrenaline and home crowd of the first. He worked more on his off-speed stuff, looking for normality and refinement as he approaches the season.
Fernandez was due to throw 24 hours later. But only 30 pitches (no breaking stuff) from a bullpen mound. His surgery was May 16. Marlins general manager Dan Jennings mentioned he has never seen anyone in his 28 years in pro ball attack rehab like Fernandez has, and the blueprint has Fernandez back in the majors sometime from mid-June to mid-July.
In the first week of August, the Mets have a three-game series in Miami. Let’s hope the schedule falls so that one of those games gives us Harvey vs. Fernandez and we keep getting three or more matchups per year for a while.
Much was robbed from the 2014 season by having starters as good as Harvey miss the whole year and Fernandez all but eight starts. Included in that tale of loss was that they could not face each other after doing so twice in 2013 (in games that went 20 and 15 innings).
New York Mets Matt Harvey throws in Tuesday’s Spring Training game.Anthony J. Causi“For us, obviously, it would be big,” Harvey said of being healthy enough to face each other again. “But it would also be good for MLB.”
We live in an age of a lot of great pitching, particularly in the NL East . Heck, before a change in schedule, the Nationals’ Stephen Strasburg was due Thursday to face Jake deGrom. But something exists beyond awesome talent with Harvey and Fernandez. There is a charisma to their games, a can’t-take-your-eyes-off-them magnetism when they are on the field. Fernandez has some Pedro Martinez about him, the ability to throw hard yet humiliate with soft stuff. Harvey is the modern picture of a power starter.
Harvey is a few weeks from 26, Fernandez is 22. They play for teams that imagine themselves burgeoning contenders, in part because both teams have such domineering aces. That promises to make any matchup between them have that Ali-Frazier feel — or maybe something more like Seaver vs. Gibson.
“I don’t remember any starts against No. 4 starters,” Tom Seaver said by phone from his Seaver Vineyards in northern California. “What you remember are the games against [Bob] Gibson.”
Seaver and Gibson pitched in the NL East (St. Louis was still in the division), facing each other 11 times once Seaver reached the majors in 1967 until Gibson retired in 1975 — the most either started against any opponent in their Hall of Fame careers. And from 1967-73 — when they opposed each other nine times — they arguably were the aces of the whole sport. Gibson was 125-70 with a 2.46 ERA, Seaver 135-76 with a 2.38. They combined for 266 complete games in those seven years.
Miami Marlins ace Jose Fernandez returns to the rotation this season.AP“When you pitched against Bob, you knew you were going to lose or win by a run, so you knew you had to be operating at no less than the 99th percentile because one pitch could really beat you,” Seaver said. “It is a real test of what you can do. Those starts are the special little corner of your career that you share with someone else who is a master of the craft.”
It is too early to call Harvey or Fernandez masters of the craft or the aces of the sport, not with Clayton Kerhsaw roaming the planet. And as the complete game figure above shows, durability is part of historic greatness. But Harvey and Fernandez teased us just enough B.C. — Before Cutting (of the surgical type) — that what is next, especially against each other, tantalizes.
“I would love to see that for the next 10 years,” Mets pitching coach Dan Warthen said. “Even though some of that is going to be from my living room.”
Considering both are represented by Scott Boras, some of those years may be with Harvey and Fernandez playing for the Yankees and Red Sox. In the present, though, they are of the Mets and the Marlins, the healed and healing, closer to renewing what just might be the most interesting pitching matchup in the sport.
Seaver remembers he disliked Gibson at the peak of his competition with the Cardinals ace, not just because Gibson was so good but because of the fierce exterior. They have become such good pals now, though, that Seaver chuckles, “Bob shows up on my doorstep to drink my wine and I can’t get him to leave.”
Let’s hope by the end of the 2015 season, we all are raising a glass to vintage Harvey and Fernandez.
