Of course Matt Harvey will take the ball for the New York Mets in Game 3 on Monday at Citi Field. Chase Utley just cranked up the emotions of this National League Division Series from easy listening to ear-splitting.
As it just so happens, who else would be on deck to step squarely into the middle of this thing?
To a Mets team that leads the majors in lowercase d’s—Travis d’Arnaud, Jacob deGrom—Harvey, 26, puts the uppercase D in “Drama.”
The Mets will tell you he doesn’t necessarily seek it. He doesn’t necessarily relish in it. The term “Drama Queen” is way too, well, dramatic for Harvey.
But man, does he find it, as effortlessly as the Kardashians sniffing out tabloid covers.
And now here it comes again.
Harvey already has drilled Utley with a fastball once this year, back in April. It was when Utley was still in Philadelphia, and Phillies starter David Buchanan had hit two Mets earlier in the game.
In 18 career at-bats against Harvey, Utley owns a .984 slugging percentage. Until MLB suspended him for two games on Sunday, there was a good chance Utley would be in the Dodgers lineup for Game 3. Now, pending appeal…
At a Citi Field press conference Sunday, Harvey referred to Utley’s “tackle” of Ruben Tejada on the play that broke the shortstop’s leg in Game 2. And Harvey is emotional enough that Mets manager Terry Collins said he already has spoken with him about how to handle the now-volatile situation against the Dodgers.
“I’ve had this conversation with him before, and when he steps on that piece of rubber, everything else is about the guy at home plate,” Collins said. “It’s him against that guy at home plate, and that’s all he’s thinking about.
“So I just wanted to make sure today that he knew that; hey, look, he’s got to go relax and make his pitches and, you know, worry about winning the baseball game.”
This is just Harvey’s latest challenge.
It was just over a month ago when he dropped the bombshell that he wasn’t supposed to pitch more than 180 innings this season, triangulating a message that yanked himself, his agent Scott Boras and Mets general manager Sandy Alderson into an uneasy public conversation that at times turned hostile.
It was just last week that he showed up late to a workout, shoveling more drama in Queens just before the Mets departed for Los Angeles to begin this series.
Inquiring minds want to know: Has Harvey irreparably damaged his relationship with his teammates? With his employers? With his fans?
“I think the perception of every player is that Matt’s got a great work ethic,” Boras said over the weekend in Los Angeles. “I think everybody knows that. Everybody knows what his ethic is.
“And remember this, too: Matt Harvey gave his arm already for the New York Mets. And that was in 2013, he went out and pitched until he didn’t have a ligament.
“He’s the kind of guy that wants his team to do well, wants them to win, and you’ve seen what he’s done.”
That Harvey already has blown out his elbow once, resulting in the Tommy John surgery in 2013 to which Boras was referring, makes his workload watch automatic headline news every time his pitching odometer rolls over another third of an inning.
So many mixed signals have been sent by so many regarding his workload that it appears the Mets are making it up as they go. And Harvey, too.
After being the first one to voice the limit, Harvey then pitched longer than expected in the Mets’ division-clinching win over Cincinnati, telling manager Terry Collins that he wanted to keep going.
He finished the summer at 189.1 innings.
So, will he pitch Game 3 with any kind of leash attached? Will the Mets automatically open a trap door after, say, five innings and make him disappear?
“We’re going to take it one game at a time and see where we’re at,” Alderson told Bleacher Report in Los Angeles.
Boras, so vociferous last month, now is going dark about the Mets’ Harvey plan.
“I’m not going to comment on it,” the agent said. “I just want to focus on the game and let them do what they’re going to do.”
He spoke with Alderson in September, a conversation during which, Boras says, Harvey’s doctors were on the phone.
“But in the playoffs, I think baseball just needs to be played here,” Boras said. “You certainly want the players and the teams to focus on the game.
“That’s what everybody should do.”
That plan was sidetracked last week when Harvey showed up late for the workout, angering his manager and teammates. Still, according to sources close to the Mets, Harvey is well-liked by teammates. He is not a pariah. He just makes them mad sometimes.
So, what do you do? During a conference call last week, I asked our resident TBS pregame and postgame show experts.
“As a manager, you have to handle it the right way,” veteran manager Dusty Baker said. “It has to be known from the get-go. My No. 1 rule was, don’t be late to work. If you are going to be late, you call me and make sure it wasn’t going to be a couple of times [within] a period of time.
“You have to handle it now while he is young, because what is going to happen later on? Also, his other teammates are looking at you on how are you going to handle it because you have to keep respect with the other teammates.”
“They should have handled this a long time ago,” longtime slugger Gary Sheffield said. “Now, these things are starting to pile up. He is doing veteran moves, if anyone can get away with it, but veterans aren’t even doing this. … It is an organizational problem.”
Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez spent four seasons (2005-08) in a Mets uniform toward the end of his career, and he’s seen plenty of phenoms come and go over the years. Some with more staying power than others.
“You still have time to hold the leash on Harvey,” Martinez said. “Everybody messes up, and I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt. Some of those veterans will pull him aside. David Wright, I know, will pull him aside and say, ‘Are you in or are you out?'”
Indeed, Wright, 32, and a teammate of Martinez’s during Pedro’s Mets years, was perturbed and did pull Harvey aside.
“We have a very good chance every time Matt Harvey takes the mound,” Wright told B/R. “With who he is and the stature he has, there’s been some things that obviously have happened over the course of the year where he’s made some mistakes. And he’s acknowledged them.
“But when it comes game time, and he takes the mound and gets the ball in his hand, there are very few guys in this game that give you that good of a chance to win. And he’s right on top of that list.”
Enter Game 3, the Dodgers and an expected sellout Citi Field crowd wanting its pound of flesh after the Utley slide broke Ruben Tejada’s leg.
“I think the most important thing is going out and doing my job and doing what’s best for the team,” Harvey said Sunday. “For me, in my mind, that’s going out and pitching a long game and being out there as long as I can and, you know, keeping zeroes on the board. For me, that’s my job. Continuing to do that is always going to be my job.
“But you know, as far as sticking up for your teammates, I think being out there and doing what’s right is exactly what I’m going to do.”
Like a moth to a flame, Harvey has a knack for this stuff, for flying straight into the searing heat of drama.
“Well, we’re in New York,” Wright said, grinning. “Anytime you’re in New York, you’re going to get more drama than in most other places.”
Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.
Follow Scott on Twitter and talk baseball.
Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com