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What Mets’ Matt Harvey can learn from Yankees’ Michael Pineda
- Updated: May 28, 2016
9:31 PM ET
TAMPA, Fla. — The career arcs of Matt Harvey and Michael Pineda are remarkably similar. Both are 27, born within two months of one another in 1989. Both were sensations as rookies. Both suffered serious, and in Pineda’s case, potentially career-ending arm injuries, early in their careers. Both have struggled trying to come back, Harvey from Tommy John surgery, Pineda from surgery to repair a torn labrum.
Both are currently suffering through probably the worst stretch of performance at any level of baseball either has ever competed at.
But that is where the roads begin to diverge.
When Harvey hit his rough spot, he chose to handle it like a spoiled adolescent, hiding from the media and by extension, the long-suffering New York Mets fans who wanted so badly to see him as the second coming of Tom Seaver.
By contrast, Pineda — no less puzzled and frustrated by his struggles than Harvey — has chosen to stand up under the scrutiny rather than run from it, to answer the questions as best he can rather than duck them, and in a second language, no less. It is the difference between being an adult and being a child.
Neither can really help the other much with his pitching woes, because frankly, while everyone has a theory neither Pineda nor New York Yankees pitching coach Larry Rothschild truly seem to have a handle on exactly why a pitcher with the talent of Pineda can suddenly have so much trouble getting hitters out. And without having spent a moment at Citi Field this season, I can still guess that the situation is pretty similar over there.
Michael Pineda’s miserable May continued on Saturday, allowing six runs as his ERA for the month climbed to 7.52. Kim Klement/USA TODAY Sports
But what Pineda can teach Harvey is how to behave under the relentless media pressure that comes with performing in New York.
Whether you choose to believe it or not, it really doesn’t matter personally to me or most of my colleagues whether an athlete speaks to us or not. I like to think I can write the story a lot better …
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