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Matt Harvey went from booed off the mound at Citi Field to hero-in-waiting Monday.
There is no telling if the former Mets ace is cured of the mental, physical and mechanical issues that have sabotaged his season, but seven shutout innings on a day his team desperately needed it was an excellent place to start.
For now, the questions over whether Harvey should remain in the rotation have subsided.
“This isn’t going to mean anything unless I continue this and stay with what we’ve been working on,” Harvey said after the Mets beat the White Sox 1-0 to snap a twogame skid.
Harvey peaked at 98 mph on the Citi Field radar gun — his zenith for the season — and maintained his velocity throughout, surrendering only two hits and a walk, with six strikeouts in his longest outing of 2016.
It was a far cry from his previous two starts, both against the Nationals. In the first, he was booed from the Citi Field mound after 2
2/3 innings in which he was shelled. In the second, he surrendered three home runs and then departed the clubhouse without speaking to reporters.
That silence was broken Monday.
“I was frustrated with myself and I know that’s not right and not acceptable,” Harvey said of his media blackout. “But for me there was a lot of emotions, a lot of frustration and I had been beating at the bush the same questions start after start and I let my emotions get the best of me.”
He smacked his glove in satisfaction and left to a chant of “Har-vey” this time, after retiring J.B. Shuck for the final out in the seventh with two runners on. Neil Walker’s homer leading off the bottom of the inning put Harvey (4-7) in position for the victory and Jeurys Familia, after two ugly performances, worked a perfect ninth for the save following Addison Reed’s scoreless eighth.
Harvey’s “intensity” and “emotion” were the best things manager Terry Collins witnessed during the 87-pitch performance.
“When he got out of that inning in the seventh, he was genuinely fired up and that was great to see,” Collins said.
Jose Quintana (5-5) was nearly as good as Harvey. The lefty surrendered one run on six hits over seven innings with seven strikeouts and two walks.
Harvey — who took a perfect game into the seventh in 2013 in his only previous start against the White Sox — retired the first 13 batters he faced before Shuck singled in the fifth. Brett Lawrie followed with a lined shot that Wilmer Flores snagged at first base and turned into an inning-ending double play.
“The way things have been going, that ball goes off [Flores’] glove and into right field and they have first and third and a big inning going,” Collins said. “But Flo made a great play on it, and I think it could be the play of the game for us, no doubt.”
Collins said he contemplated removing Harvey after his perfect sixth, but decided his pitcher had earned the seventh. But that choice appeared dubious when Adam Eaton walked leading off the inning and Jose Abreu followed with a single.
“When it’s 0-0 and you have a couple of runners on like that, you kind of think about the worst at that point when things haven’t been going that great,” Harvey said. “So to hold the runners on base like that and be able to get out of it was definitely a good feeling.”
After Melky Cabrera sacrificed the runners to second and third, Harvey got Todd Frazier to foul out and then induced a groundout by Shuck.
Harvey had worked between starts with pitching coach Dan Warthen on a mechanical adjustment and was satisfied with the correction.
“The feel of releasing the ball and having the same arm slot was big for us,” said Harvey, whose ERA dropped to 5.37 from 6.08. “It’s nice to put so much work in between starts and go out there and actually be able to maintain what we’ve been working on and have good results from it.”