Harvey, the righthander from Fitch High in Groton, allowed four hits in his 72/3 sterling innings, one an infield hit, one a liner to centerfield that was misjudged and went for an RBI double, he walked two and struck out nine.
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Two days after pitching the last two innings of the NLDS-clinching win over the Dodgers, Jeurys Familia recorded the final four outs against the Cubs. Lester lasted 6.2 innings and gave up four runs to a New York lineup that looks dramatically different since the Cubs swept the season series (7-0) before the All-Star break. The Dark Knight shook it off, and continued pitching scoreless baseball through the seventh inning. And for one night, they stand a game closer to their first World Series in 15 years.
Daniel Murphy’s home run bounced off the bottom of the second deck in right field in the first inning while Travis d’Arnaud blasted one to straightaway center in the fifth, hitting the Big Apple that would pop up moments later, the orange-and-blue crowd in a frenzy.
“The ball kind of dented my arm a little bit, got me right in the triceps”, Harvey said. The Mets were also without David Wright for those games. There’s homering off lefties, and then there’s homering off Kershaw and Lester.
The right-hander was rolling along until he plunked Anthony Rizzo in the right arm with an 0-2 pitch to start the fifth.
“I could tell by the first pitch I caught”, d’Arnaud said.
One out later, Cespedes charged Javier Baez’s sharp ground single to left and cut down Castro at the plate by a couple of steps to keep the score tied at 1. A sac-bunt by Harvey moved Lagares to second, and then Lagares would steal third off of Lester with Granderson batting.
It was Murphy’s third homer against a left-hander in the playoffs – he had one during the regular season. When the Mets’ manager announced his decision to bench first baseman Lucas Duda for Michael Cuddyer becasue of recent struggles in the postseason and repeated struggles against Jon Lester, it generated a lot of negative buzz.
As if picking up where he left off on May 13th, when he allowed Chicago a mere three hits over seven innings and fanned nine at Wrigley, Matt Harvey commenced a commanding performance by striking out the first two batters he faced, both swinging. Still, the Cubs have chosen to ensconce Schwarber’s home run ball in a plastic box atop the videoboard for all to see. He utilized his entire repertoire with control, throwing 97 pitches with 64 (66%) going for strikes, while averaging an economical 13.2 pitches per frame.
“Saving the homers, I guess”, Murphy joked.
And with home runs in three consecutive postseason games, Murphy matched the franchise record feat of Donn Clendenon in the 1969 World Series. The team that wins Game 1 at home, which is what the Mets did on Saturday, has gone on to win the series 66.3 percent of the time.
“The cemeteries will be overloaded with Cubs fans telling their loved ones they did it”, he said.
The Cubs lost game one. The Mets went to a six-man rotation to help protect all their young starters in the middle of he season, and Harvey did get 11 days off between two mid-September starts, but that was about it. “They battled, got hits when they needed them”. The 82-year-old lifelong Cubs fan created the design before the Cubs won the division series.
It was as if Harvey had this game in an iron grip, and only his manager, Terry Collins, could pry it out of his hands.
Cubs slugger Kris Bryant was unaware of the story.
“I gave up hits at the wrong time”, he said.
The good news for the Cubs is that they have another chance to accomplish the main objective of a road team in the first two games of a playoff series – splitting the first two matches.
“My twin brother and I were watching that game together”.
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“I know there’s been a lot of speculation or talk going around the past month”, said Harvey, who had not gone that far in a game in two months.
