TWO DUELING PERSONAS
Harvey, Fernandez — 2 recovering aces with an ‘ it’ factor — offer promise of fantastic battles
J UPITER, Fla. — The crowd that watched Matt Harvey’s second spring start Wednesday included an interested bystander in a No. 16 Marlins uniform.
Jose Fernandez sat near Miami manager Mike Redmond on a bench to the right of the Roger Dean Stadium home dugout. He said he wanted to watch, curious to get a glimpse not just of Harvey, but his own near future. The duo shares much in common— a division, genius in their right arms, an agent and Tommy John surgery.
‘ We’ve chatted some about [ rehab],” Fernandez said.
Harvey endured Wednesday what he called sluggishness in a second start that lacked the adrenaline and homecrowd of the first. He worked more on his offspeed stuff, looking for normality and refinement toward his season.
Fernandez was due to throw 24 hours later. But just 30 pitches ( no breaking stuff) from a bullpen mound. His surgery was May 16. Marlins general manager Dan Jennings mentioned he has never seen anyone in his 28 years in pro ball attack rehab like Fernandez, and the blueprint has him back in the majors sometime from mid June to mid July.
In the first week of August, the Mets have a threegame series in Miami. Let’s hope the schedule falls just so that one of those games gives us Harvey vs. Fernandez, and that we keep getting three or more matchups per year for a while.
For much was robbed from the 2014 season by having starters as good as Harvey miss the whole year and Fernandez all but eight starts. Included in that tale of loss was that they could not face each other after doing so twice in 2013 ( in games that went 20 and 15 innings).
“For us, obviously, it would be big,” Harvey said of being healthy enough to face each other again. “But it would also be good for MLB.”
We live in an age of a lot of great pitching, particularly in the NL East. Heck, before a change in schedule, Washington’s Stephen Strasburg was due Thursday to face Jake deGrom. But there is something that exists beyond awesome talent with Harvey and Fernandez. There is a charisma to their games, a can’t take your eyes off them magnetism when they are on the field. Fernandez has some Pedro Martinez about him, the ability to throw hard yet humiliate with soft stuff. Harvey is the modern picture of a power starter.
Harvey is a few weeks from 26, Fernandez, 22. They play for teams that imagine themselves burgeoning contenders, in part because both teams have such domineering aces. That promises to make any matchup between them have that Ali vs. Frazier feel, or maybe something more like Seaver vs. Gibson.
“I don’t remember any starts
against No. 4 starters,” Tom Seaver said by phone from his Seaver Vineyards in Northern California. “What you remember are the games against [ Bob] Gibson.”
Seaver and Gibson pitched in the NL East ( St. Louis was still in the division), facing each other 11 times once Seaver reached the majors in 1967 until Gibson retired in 1975 — the most either started against any other opponent in their Hall of Fame careers. And from 196773 — when they opposed each other nine times— they arguably were the aces of the whole sport. Gibson was 12570 with a 2.46 ERA, Seaver 13576 with a 2.38. They combined for 266 complete games in those seven years.
“When you pitched against Bob, you knew you were going to lose or win by a run, so you knew you had to be operating at no less than the 99th percentile because one pitch could really beat you,” Seaver said. “It is a real test of what you can do. Those starts are the special little corner of your career that you share with someone else who is a master of the craft.”
It is too early to call Harvey or Fernandez masters of the craft or the aces of the sport— not with Clayton Kershaw roaming the planet — and as the completegame figure above shows, durability is part of historic greatness. But Harvey and Fernandez have
: teased us with just enough B. C.— Before Cutting ( of the surgical type) — that what is next, especially against each other, tantalizes.
“I would love to see that for the next 10 years,” Mets pitching coach Dan Warthen said. “Even though some of that is going to be frommy living room.”
Considering both are represented by Scott Boras, some of those years may be with Harvey and Fernandez playing for the Yankees and Red Sox. In the present, though, they are of the Mets and the Marlins, the healed and healing, closer to renewing what just might be the most interesting pitching matchup in the sport.
Seaver remembers that at the peak of his competition with Gibson he disliked the Cardinals ace, not just because Gibson was so good but because of his fierce exterior. They have become such good pals now, though that Seaver chuckles, “Bob shows up on my doorstep to drink my wine, and I can’t get him to leave.”
Let’s hope by the end of the 2015 season, we all are raising a glass to vintage Harvey and Fernandez.