Matt Harvey missed a mandatory workout today. The initial word—what Harvey apparently told the Mets—was that he was stuck in tunnel traffic. OK, it happens, traffic in this city sucks. But then Harvey finally made it to Citi Field and gave a different version of events.
Newsday’s Marc Carig passes along manager Terry Collins’s version of Harvey’s journey to Queens:
So, this doesn’t shake out. No matter how bad traffic is, it doesn’t take two hours and 15 minutes to get from the Queens-Midtown Tunnel to Flushing. And then there’s Harvey’s excuse when he finally arrived—he simply lost track of time. That doesn’t square with him having sat in traffic for more than an hour.
Even then, I have questions. Did Harvey initially tell the Mets he was stuck in traffic? Had he not even left his house by then? Was he stuck in traffic on the way back to his house from wherever he spent the night? I hope the Yankees lose so the New York tabloids can spend the next few days devoting all their resources to this story.
(When he finally did get to the stadium, Harvey told the media “I just screwed up” and refused to take questions.)
Collins had more to say on what missing the workout means about Harvey, and it’s a lovely little rant about it meaning whatever you want it to mean:
My perception is that no team can take a minor story that could easy be swept under the rug and blow it up into back-page material quite like the Mets.