Unbe lievable: Misunderstanding has resulted in the suspension of New York Mets head coach
On Sunday, there was a major league baseball game at Citi Field. Off-record, however, was more akin to consumer fraud. With pitcher Matt Harvey’s abrupt suspension announced early on Sunday morning, the Mets effectively gave up a game and used it as Giancarlo Stanton’s batting practice.
An exhibition like this has its charms. The massive right fielder for the Miami Marlins, Stanton, showed off his incredible power against an outmatched Adam Wilk, who undoubtedly hoped for better conditions for his Mets debut. Stanton crushed two breaking balls for home runs, one off the facing of a stadium restaurant and the other to the second deck in left.
The Mets responded by losing 7-0 and managing just one hit. The beating wasn’t
Although the humiliation was not as severe as the disastrous 23-5 loss in Washington last Sunday, it was still played in a crisis.
The story from last Sunday concerned pitcher Noah Syndergaard, who tore his right latissimus muscle and discovered that he was not invincible after all. After stubbornly refusing a magnetic resonance imaging test on his biceps, Syndergaard made his first start and has been out for months.
This Sunday’s mystery centered on Harvey, who had been placed on unpaid leave for three days due to an unidentified infraction of team policies. When asked what he hoped Harvey would learn, manager Terry Collins stated the following on his pregame radio show with Wayne Randazzo:
Everyone is unique, but we all have work to do.
What a cruel indictment of a pitcher Collins relied on in the ninth inning of a game that was less than two years old in the World Series!
It makes sense that the Mets wouldn’t bench a player unless it was absolutely necessary—either to discipline him or to serve as an example for the team. It was a disaster to call up a non-roster pitcher from their far-off Class AAA affiliate, have him fly over night from Albuquerque to Los Angeles to New York, and have him report straight to the ballpark to start.
A close associate of Harvey, who wished to remain anonymous, claimed that miscommunication was the root of the issue. The source claimed that Harvey played golf on Saturday, skipped the ballpark because of a migraine, or
