At 7:30 a.m. Sunday, Matt Harvey contacted the Mets.
“I woke up, I can’t swallow. At that point, not sleeping and coming to the park, I texted one of the trainers and told him I’m coming in and not feeling great,” Harvey said, noting he felt like the early stages of death for “a couple days. The last two days not feeling great and today was the worst. Took some antibiotics. Can’t swallow. Felt weak, rundown.”
But even a subpar Harvey was good enough to claim victory for the Mets, who beat the Marlins, 7-6, Sunday at Citi Field for an eighth straight win. Harvey improved to 3-0 in his six-plus innings, which included seven strikeouts. Harvey surrendered eight hits and four runs as his ERA rose to 3.50.
But the fact he was able to do anything was impressive.
“He came to the ballpark extremely sick. Said he wanted to pitch,” manager Terry Collins said. “When he went out in the seventh, you could tell he was out of gas. Here’s a guy didn’t have much energy yet gave us six-plus innings.”
After giving up a run in the sixth, Harvey gave up singles to Marcell Ozuna, Jacob Realmuto and Adeiny Hechavarria to start the seventh before getting pulled.
“It was a battle,” Harvey said. “The offense did all the talking. For me, It was wanting to battle through it. The seventh inning, I kind of ran out of gas.”
The fractured forearm for Jerry Blevins and the fractured hand suffered by catcher Travis d’Arnaud weren’t the only bad medical news revealed by the Mets. GM Sandy Alderson admitted there is an “issue” with reliever Vic Black, who had received some optimistic reports. Until Sunday. Black is going for additional tests.
“We’re going to have him looked at again,” Alderson said. “There’s an issue there and we’re not sure exactly what it is. He complained of some soreness and we’re going to check it out.”
Alderson said the soreness involved Black’s shoulder and neck.
Collins had high praise for Jeurys Familia, who earned his sixth save in white-knuckle fashion. Familia started the ninth by walking Reid Brignac. Familia ended the ninth getting Giancarlo Stanton on a grounder with Brignac on second.
“Huge inning by Jeurys,” Collins said. “He had to step up and he stepped up because the energy was gone with the injuries. Someone had to step up and he did.”
Alderson said he did not anticipate the Mets looking outside the organization for help to replace the injury losses of Blevins and d’Arnaud.
“We’re comfortable with what we have. You’re never happy with an injury but we’re fortunate we have somebody of [catcher Kevin] Plawecki’s caliber in the system. You’re not going to find somebody like that on the market. And we also feel we’ve still got plenty of arms that can come in and help us.”
