Major League Baseball

The meaning of Matt Harvey's excellent debut

Updated Mar. 4, 2020 2:12 p.m. ET

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You almost couldn't dream of a better matchup. Thursday in the capital, Stephen Strasburg went up against Matt Harvey. It would technically be possible to improve on that. Some would suggest Corey Kluber and Clayton Kershaw. Others would suggest Felix Hernandez and Clayton Kershaw. But, on pure stuff alone, Strasburg's a delight to watch, and Harvey's every bit his equal. At least, that's what we recalled. We also hadn't seen Harvey pitch a major-league game in a while.

Harvey began and ended on a pitch count. He still managed to go longer than Strasburg did, spinning six shutout frames on 91 pitches. I don't know if there was a single representative at-bat, but I will volunteer this first-inning showdown against Bryce Harper:

In case that one doesn't do it for you, you might prefer the third-inning at-bat, where Harvey whiffed Harper with a high fastball at 97. Or you could skip ahead to the sixth, where Harvey whiffed Harper with a high fastball at 96. Between Strasburg and Harper, the Nationals have two young stars who've generated near-unparalleled hype. Thursday, Harvey out-played them both. It was a rather emphatic way for the phenom to kick off what promises to be an electric campaign.

And the Mets themselves are thinking big things. Bigger things, at least, than they've been thinking about the last few years. This year, they want to be a year of transition from finding and developing talent to winning. Like a smaller-scale Cubs, if you will, and, like the Cubs, the Mets think they have the ability to get to the playoffs, even without the injured Zack Wheeler. It stands to reason that, if things go well this year for New York, it'll be in large part because of what Harvey can do, now that he's back.

Let's talk about numbers for a moment. Actually, several moments. Numbers let us know what to expect in the future. Projection numbers are based on numbers that have been put up in the past. No matter what you think of projections as a science, there's really no arguing with the concept -- players let us know, generally, what they're likely to do, based on what they've already done. If we can estimate players, we can estimate groups of players, which we designate as "teams". The idea is simple. The execution is less simple, but we do all right.

These Mets? We have them projected as close to a .500 ballclub. That one passes the smell test. That one passes all the tests. It's precisely these kinds of teams about which people say "they can get to the playoffs, if a couple things go right." The Wheeler thing has already gone wrong, but thankfully for the Mets, they do have rotation depth. Based on what they seem to be as a team, the Mets don't look like playoff favorites, but they most definitely have a real shot. And we can dig into that some.

Look closer, and you see this: Matt Harvey is projected to be worth 3.5 Wins Above Replacement. Now, that's a strong, valuable number. Harvey's projected as the best pitcher on the team. But this would also be a substantial step back from the last time Harvey was healthy and pitching. And for that, there's a sensible explanation: Harvey had surgery. He didn't pitch an inning in the majors in 2014, and that introduces some uncertainty to the models. When faced with uncertainty, the models are going to regress performance toward the average. Explained another way, coming into the year, one couldn't completely comfortably project Matt Harvey to be an ace again, because we just couldn't be sure. Tommy John surgery is far from automatic.

And I'll admit, even now, we know only so much. We don't know what obstacles Harvey might ultimately encounter. But, we know Harvey had a long recovery period. It's been close to a year and a half since his operation. That bodes well. And now we have Harvey dominating the Nationals, albeit a diminished Nationals lineup missing a few would-be starters. More important than the statistical performance is the actual pitching performance. Harvey's delivery and repertoire were intact. He simply looked like the old Matt Harvey. He topped out in the high-90s. He wasn't afraid of throwing his breaking balls, or airing it out.

It's one game, but, Harvey looks like he's back. You can't fake what he did, meaning one can have more confidence now in the rest of his 2015. So, return to those projections. Harvey is projected for 3.5 WAR. Kershaw is projected for more than 6, while baseball's other best pitchers are projected around 5. The last time Harvey was healthy, he was arguably the best starter in the game. Kershaw had him in ERA, but Harvey had him in peripherals.

What if we took away some of that injury uncertainty? What if we were to bump Harvey's projection, now that we've seen him dominate a mostly major-league lineup? On FanGraphs, right now, we have the Nationals, Dodgers, and Cardinals as the best teams in the National League. They're all projected for at least 88 wins, including the games that have already happened. Now look at the following group, with win projections:

Six teams, all within four projected wins. If the math were to hold true, two of these teams would advance to the wild-card game. Right in the middle, we find the Mets, between the Cubs and the Giants. But what if we think Harvey will be more valuable? An extra win would be absolutely critical. An extra win and a half? All the more. There's a concept out there describing what's called the win curve, where wins are most valuable to teams right around this position, on the fringes of contending. The Mets are positioned right where every last win is crucial. To an average team, a win costs something like $8 million on the market. To a team in this kind of spot, maybe $10 - 12 million. Harvey, then, seems to have chosen a good time to demonstrate that he's back to being awesome.

We have the Mets at roughly 34% playoff odds. Add a win and they'd get up to or above 40%. Not only would their odds get better -- odds for the competition would get worse, since the Mets would be stronger. If you added a win and a half the Mets might gain more than 10 percentage points. It wouldn't quite be a playoff coin flip, but it'd be close. Even still, the Mets would be a longshot to catch the Nationals for the division, but you don't have to dream on Harvey and the supporting cast that much to see a legitimate wild-card team. One ace-level Matt Harvey cures an awful lot of ills.

For the Mets right now, there's a lot to like, and that doesn't even consider that they just took a series on the road from the team they'll be chasing in the East. In his first major-league game since August 2013, Matt Harvey again looked like maybe the best pitcher in baseball, and while it was only six innings, it was six rather demonstrative innings. The biggest challenge might not be evaluating how Matt Harvey's going to pitch. The biggest challenge might be figuring out how to get him to take a break. Don't want to risk having him too tired for the playoffs.