Keep Climbing

You probably have figured out after seven years of doing this that I like to be aggravated. I like to think that I don’t aggravate easily without a good reason. And let’s face it. The Mets have given me no shortage of good reasons to be aggravated.

I can’t get aggravated by Sunday’s loss. Don’t get me wrong … I really want to. Especially because the Mets, as is their pattern this season, go 5-3 against decent teams like Arizona and the Giants and then drop two out of three to this bunch (improving though they might be). And also because Ramon Ramirez continues to be a train wreck out of the bullpen. But let’s think big picture here. Matt Harvey got hit around the ballpark on Sunday. This isn’t the worst thing in the world. Sure we’d love to see Matt Harvey come into the majors and blow everybody away. But how realistic did you think that really was?

And you could bet the house that I would love to find a way to blame Dan Warthen and his change-ups for Sunday’s debacle. But I can’t. Because from what I saw, the problem was locating the fastball. Go back and look at the pitch that struck out Paul Goldschmidt looking from Harvey’s first start. It was a nasty fastball that snapped back to the outside corner and could have cut a fine slice out of a tomato. Compare that to the pitch that Chase Headley jacked out of Petco. It was the same pitch, same intent. But instead of the fastball being nasty and clipping a sharp slice of the corner, this pitch lollipopped over the inner half of the plate and it was easy for Headley to hit out of even the largest of parks.

So fear not, Mets fans. It’s all part of the process of building for the future. If NASA can land a rover on Mars so it could find all those home runs that Steve Trachsel gave up, then the sky is certainly still the limit for Matt Harvey. So keep climbing.