When Matt Harvey took the mound to pitch against his former team he did not know what to expect but Mets fans gave him a series of rousing ovations and then watched the home team beat him 7-1 for Win #7 in a row.
Harvey said after the game, “Obviously there has been so many ups and downs here with this ballpark and that organization that I did not know what to expect and what they gave me, what those fans gave me out there was pretty incredible. I was holding back tears. I am not going to lie about that. It was pretty hard holding them back. It reminded me of a lot of the good memories and coming off the field with an ovation like that, it brought a lot back. It was very special to me and is something I will never forget.”
The Mets plated three runs in the second inning off Harvey as Kevin Pillar and Jose Peraza stroked RBI hits and added one in the third on a Dominic Smith RBI single. In the fifth inning, they knocked Harvey out of the game scoring 3 more runs as once again Dominic Smith and Jose Peraza stroked RBI hits and the Mets were headed to the team’s 7th straight win.
In all, Harvey surrendered 7 runs in less than 5 innings of work as his ERA rose to 4.81 and he acknowledged that after the game when he said, “I wish things would have gone differently and the score was flip-flopped but my job is to go out there and keep runs off the board and I obviously did not do that, regardless of the situation. It was a rough one.”
For the Mets it was anything but a rough one as they upped their record to 18-13 tops in the NL East and they have a dominating 11-4 record here at CitiField. That home record includes series sweeps over the Philies, Diamondbacks and Orioles as they are starting to make the joint in Queens a real den for visiting opponents. They also got another great performance from Taijuan Walker–7 innings of one run ball that the team used to rest the core members of the Met bullpen.
After a day off tomorrow, they go on a 3 city road trip playing the Rays, Braves and Marlins which will further test their team depth that has so far this season passed with flying colors. Guys Like Jonathan Villar, Kevin Pillar, and Jose Peraza have given the Mets quality depth that could fill in for injured or slumping players and we have seen that in the past week, But more importantly, the bat of Dominic Smith who is batting .700 with runners in scoring position since May 5th, is starting to heat up.
And that coupled with the Mets starting pitchers compiling a 1,80 ERA in past seven games has given the team their longest winning streak since 2019. And that is how early season games become important–they create trends that last all year long. And if the Met hitters start to reach their potential, the sky is the limit.
And we saw this all on a day the Met fans looked back at the glory days of Matt Harvey understanding that is an important part of team history, At the same time, the 2021 Mets may be starting to carve out a history of their own. Seemed like a day of symmetry for Met Nation.