The teams of tomorrow opened their 7-game National League Championship Series tonight and the New York Mets prevailed with a 4-2 win over the Chicago Cubs thanks to a spectacular start by Matt Harvey, who out-dueled post-season veteran Jon Lester, who owns two World Series rings with the Boston Red Sox.
Harvey has been such a lightning rod for the Mets, their fans and the media covering the team for the last month because of his “innings limit” controversy engineered by super-agent Scott Boras. Boras felt that Harvey should stop pitching after 180 innings, which would have made him unavailable for the post-season for the Mets. After a great deal of drama, the Mets slowed down his regular season innings for the final few weeks of the season (he finished with 189 regular season innings) and waited to pitch him in the Division Series until Game 3 against the Dodgers to avoid having to use him twice.
Of course, the series against the Dodgers went five games and Harvey was by far the Mets’ best option in Game 1 against the Cubs. Harvey delivered a spectacular performance, tossing 7.2 innings of 2-run ball; he did not allow a single base-runner until the 5th inning. In the 6th, the Dark Knight took a line drive off his tricep (which he turned into an out). TBS announcer Ron Darling (a former Mets pitcher and current team broadcaster) speculated that his arm might start swelling, which might impact his control. This seemed to manifest in the 7th inning but he struck out the last two batters. All of the TBS announcers (Darling, Hall of Famer Cal Ripken, and Ernie Johnson Jr.) assumed that he was finished after 7 innings. But Harvey had thrown only 91 pitches through 7 and came out to start the 8th. After two quick outs, Cubs’ rookie slugger Kyle Schwarber, who looks like a NFL player, hit a 469-foot home run and Mets’ manager Terry Collins brought in closer Jeurys Familia, who completed a four-out save.
This was a HUGE win for the Mets. After two coast-to-coast flights to Los Angeles to play Game 5 of the NLDS, it would have been understandable if the Amazins’ came out a little flat in Game 1 but Harvey delivered and, again, Daniel Murphy delivered. Murphy hit a solo home run off Lester in the first inning to set the tone and then made a diving stop at 2nd base for the last out of the game. As I’ve written before, Murph is NOT home run hitter normally (his 14 this season is a regular season career high) but he now has four post-season blasts, including three in the last games against $517 million worth of star pitchers (Clayton Kershaw, Zack Greinke, and Lester).
The reason why this win was so important for New York is that they’re facing the hottest pitcher in baseball Sunday night, Jake Arrieta, who has won 19 of his last 20 starts (including the post-season). 29 years after the Mets’ last Championship in 1986, Arrieta is the Cubs’ version of the Astros’ Mike Scott, who clinched the ’86 Division title for the Astros with a no-hitter. Scott beat the Mets in Games 1 and 4 in the ’86 NLCS with 18 innings of one-run ball. Fortunately, the Mets pulled out Game 6 in 16 innings to send Scott home to the golf course before he could break their hearts in Game 7.
The point here is that Arrieta is so dominant right now that you would absolutely not want to face him with the prospect of going to Chicago down 2 games to 0.
One final note of caution for the New Yorkers going forward: manager Terry Collins was fortunate that he was able to win Game 5 against the Dodgers and Game 1 against the Cubs without using any of his normal bullpen pitchers besides Familia. The Mets two primary set-up men (Tyler Clippard and Addison Reed) have been very shaky in the last few weeks. In Game 5 in Los Angeles, he used rookie starter Noah Syndergaard to pitch the 7th inning and then used Familia for a 6-out save. In Game 1 against the Cubs, with Harvey sitting at only 91 pitches, there was no way he was going to bring in Clippard or Reed. Although he gave up the Schwarber home run, Harvey got the two outs he needed allowing the bridge to Familia without risking a Reed or Clippard outing.
Sunday night in Game 2 will feature Syndergaard against the red-hot Arrieta. The Cubs will be heavily favored because Arrieta has only given up 18 earned runs in his last 161.2 innings. He will win the Cy Young Award fairly easily despite the other-worldly regular season campaigns delivered by Kershaw and Greinke. The Mets will need a spectacular performance by Syndergaard and hope the game is close in the late innings.
Thanks for reading.
Chris Bodig