Matt Harvey Could Make History, and Not In a Good Way

Looks like an Unhappy Harvey Day.  (Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)

Matt Harvey's fall from All-Star Game starting pitcher to oft-injured, in-game batting practice pitcher has been well documented.  A year after going 4-10 with a 4.86 ERA and 1.468 WHIP, Harvey has somehow gotten worse.  Much, much worse.  In fact, if he doesn't show any kind of progress in his final few starts, he stands to make Mets history, and it's not the kind of history any pitcher would ever want to be associated with.

In 16 starts this season, Harvey has seen his ERA and WHIP go up to 6.14 and 1.574, respectively.  Should Harvey fail to lower his ERA under 6.00 before the end of the campaign, he would join an exclusive club.  How exclusive would it be?  Let's just say no one has been allowed to enter it yet.

Thanks to the baseball-reference.com Play Index, Pete Schourek and Matt Harvey can be mentioned in the same sentence.

Prior to Harvey's 2017 campaign, Pete Schourek was the Mets pitcher who came closest to posting an ERA north of 6.00 with at least 16 starts.  But Schourek's 5.96 ERA in 1993 was crafted as both a starter and reliever.  In Schourek's eighteen starts, he posted a 5.47 ERA, compared to the embarrassing 7.86 ERA he had in 23 relief appearances for the last Mets team to reach triple digits in losses.

Now if we only consider those Mets hurlers who made all of their appearances in a starting role, the closest one to Harvey is a another former ace whose career in New York was beleaguered by injuries.

What is it with guys named Pete or the Spanish equivalent of Pete and high ERAs?  Is Harvey secretly a Pete in disguise?

Harvey is not the only Mets starter this season to suffer from injuries, poor performance or a combination of the two.  Zack Wheeler had a 5.21 ERA in 17 starts before injuries curtailed his season.  Robert Gsellman is the owner of an unsightly 5.58 ERA in 19 starts and three relief appearances.  And had Steven Matz's season not come to a close after just 13 starts, he'd be in line to join Harvey in the Mile High ERA club (Matz finished the year with a 6.08 ERA).

But as awful as Mets pitchers have been this year, no pitcher in the 56-year history of the franchise who made as many as 16 starts has ever finished a season with an ERA higher than 6.00.  That may change when the curtain falls on the 2017 baseball season in a couple of weeks.  And a former Dark Knight could be facing some dark nights of his own during the off-season as he reflects upon his historically bad campaign.