KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Matt Harvey understood what he was up against Sunday night better than anyone. Look, forget how that game last November — Game 5, World Series — ended, the way he talked Terry Collins into letting him pitch the ninth, and how the Royals made him pay for that bold bit of braggadocio.
Remember this: across eight innings, he had been as dominant as he ever has been. He had every pitch working. He had no-hit stuff, and against a lot of teams — against almost every other team — he had the kind of stuff that would’ve yielded 13 or 14 strikeouts. Against the Royals, that number was nine — still a good total, not reflective of just how good Harvey was on a night when he had his A-plus stuff.
He didn’t have his A-plus stuff Sunday night.
“I made some pitches when I had to,” he said, “and didn’t when I really needed to.”
And against the Royals, who are every bit as good as their reputation, who are every bit as good as a defending world champion and a two-time-defending pennant winner ought to be, you really need those good pitches a lot. They dink you and they dunk you, they run on you and they get in your head and if you give them an extra out they know what to do with it.
Harvey knew that part pretty well, too, since the first batter he had faced in Game 1 of the Series last fall, Alcides Escobar, had hit a routine fly ball to left-center that Yoenis Cespedes somehow turned into an inside-the-park home run.
This time, it was Mike Moustakas, second man up in the first, and this time it was an even easier play, a can-of-corn to left that Cespedes dropped as if he were Jackie Smith, bless his heart, all alone in the end zone. It led to an unearned run, which looked like the only run the Royals would need all night but ultimately proved to be the run that decided this 4-3 K.C. win on Opening Night.
“It’s baseball,” Harvey said. “Things happen. Nobody’s trying to do anything but win a baseball game out here. Errors happen. That’s part of the game.”
And so is learning to deal with a team that simply knows how to play winning baseball. Harvey was fine Sunday night, across 83 pitches and 5 ²/₃ innings. He was good, not great, and he was mostly decent, not dominating but against most teams in the National League, where he will spend most of his summer, he would have had plenty of answers for free-swingers and bat-flippers.
Against the Royals?
Well, the defending champs drive everybody crazy. Two years ago it was downright charming to watch them torture the Orioles and the Angels and the Giants in the postseason, the feisty engine that could. Last year, up close, the Mets didn’t find them so terribly cute. And by now, they’re downright tired of them.
“The other team was ready for the mistakes, the balls he threw down the middle,” Mets catcher Travis d’Arnaud said, “and they found holes.”
They found enough of them that Harvey left trailing 3-0, and wound up allowing four runs total (three earned) after Bartolo Colon surrendered one after he was pulled. Good, not great. Decent, not dominant. Good enough to beat a lot of teams Sunday night. Not nearly good enough to beat the defending champs.
“I felt fine,” Harvey said. “But that’s not the way I wanted to start the season.”
It wasn’t just Cespedes’ antics that injected an eerie sense of déjà vu. It was Lorenzo Cain and Eric Hosmer who sabotaged Harvey’s night last November, Cain drawing a leadoff walk and Hosmer following with a run-scoring double that finally chased Harvey and sped along the Mets’ autumn demise.
Sunday, they tortured him some more: three hits and an RBI for Hosmer, two walks, a hit and two runs scored for Cain. If there is a consolation to be found, it’s this: Cain and Hosmer will turn their attention elsewhere starting now. They won’t be stalking Harvey in the National League.
“It’s something I can build on,” Harvey said.
He has emerged as the ace of aces, the alpha dog of a staff stuffed with Type-A pitchers, and if his health issues are truly behind him he may well live up to that this year. He says he’ll be better than this. The Mets have to believe him. Because he needs to be.
