Travis d’Arnaud saw it right away. Before the game. In the bullpen. In fact, he saw the look in Matt Harvey’s eyes even before that.

Like back in spring training.

“He’s got that look in his eye back like when he was dominant,” d’Arnaud said of Harvey, claiming he saw the telltale look “right when he showed up [in spring training], I noticed it in the first bullpen I caught of his, and I knew it was going to be a fun spring and a fun year.”

And Harvey brought the look — but not his best stuff — to the mound at chilly Citi Field on Tuesday. He worked five good, effective, one-hit and scoreless innings, but he did not get a decision in the Mets’ 2-0 victory over the Phillies before an announced crowd of 21,397.

“Obviously, going five innings and not giving up a ton of runs is a plus. It’s something I haven’t been used to here so it was nice to get that done,” said Harvey who exited for a pinch hitter after striking out five, walking just one and throwing 86 pitches. “Not having my best stuff, not having that much feel and still battling through and being able to go deeper in the game and keep the damage from happening, it was definitely a plus.”

So maybe there was a no-decision. The reward for Harvey — and the Mets — was far greater. It had to be a win for his confidence. Harvey has overcome enough physical adversity, from Tommy John surgery to a stress injury in his scapula bone to thoracic outlet syndrome surgery, for the lifetimes of an entire team. So this initial outing of 2018, was his latest fresh start.

“It’s good to get the first one out of the way. I threw a lot of pitches so I wasn’t happy about that and didn’t get to six, seven innings like I wanted, but it’s definitely a good start,” said Harvey, whose velocity was in the 90-93 mph range, but his location, location, location would have brought any realtor to tears. “When I needed to throw a good fastball I was able to locate that pretty good, not necessarily going in and up but up and down.”

And the Phillies, who managed just Rhys Hoskins’ second-inning single plus a runner on via error and one walk against Harvey, could do little with the high fastballs.

Or against the bullpen, although they did put the tying runs on in the ninth against Jeurys Familia, who survived the inning for his second save. The Phillies also put two on against reliever AJ Ramos in the sixth after Harvey left, but Jerry Blevins came on and got lefty Odubel Herrera for the third out. Then Seth Lugo was amazing, getting six straight outs (19 strikes on 22 pitches) before yielding to Familia.

The Mets finally broke through against Phils starter Ben Lively in the sixth. Yoenis Cespedes was hit by a pitch leading off. Jay Bruce stroked what could have been a double-play grounder into the shift but shortstop J.P Crawford had a momentary bobble before getting Bruce. Todd Frazier doubled in Cespedes, took third on a groundout and scored when d’Arnaud flicked an outside pitch to center.

But the story of the chilled night was Harvey — though he said the weather wasn’t that bad. Go figure.

“That was really good. Tonight, tough day to start. Not knowing if you’re gonna pitch and not knowing if you’re gonna play and then misting while you’re warming up. It’s tough,” said manager Mickey Callaway. “He looked really good and he didn’t even have his best stuff. But he looked good. The confidence was there. … I think he is going to throw 96. Today is a tough day to go out and have your best crisp stuff. If it were a warm summer day you would have seen more velo.”

Good stuff or not, the result was what the Mets — and Harvey — required. For the mind and the whole win-loss thing.

“We’re having a lot of fun. It’s good to be on that side of things,” said Harvey, who picked up one of the Mets’ seven hits. “Anytime you start hot like we are you want to keep that rolling and we’re having a lot of fun and we’re just going to keep that going.”