New York Mets: Adjustments Have Matt Harvey Pitching Like a Cy Young-Caliber Ace

About two weeks before the start of the 2015 MLB regular season, the New York Mets announced that pitcher Zack Wheeler had a torn UCL in his pitching elbow and would undergo season-ending Tommy John surgery.

There is someone within the organization who can relate to the 24-year-old starter. That person is Matt Harvey, who missed all of 2014 because of the same ever-feared Tommy John surgery.

And with the Wheeler injury confirmed, the Mets desperately needed Harvey to show no ill effects from his surgery and return to his 2013 form—when he went 9-5 with a 2.27 ERA and struck out 191 batters in 178.1 innings, was the National League starting pitcher in the All-Star Game and finished fourth in the Cy Young voting despite missing the final month of the season.

Through one month of the 2015 regular season, it looks like he has recovered nicely.

While six starts is a small sample size, it is impossible to ignore the success that Harvey has already enjoyed. He has won five of his six starts, averaged nearly a strikeout per inning pitched and maintained a stellar 2.72 ERA.

Most of that success can be attributed to Harvey's incredible talent and overpowering nature, but he has also made some adjustments that have allowed him to return from injury in peak form.

Arguably the most critical of those changes is his use of the curveball. In 2013, Harvey relied heavily on his slider as a breaking pitch to put hitters away, but he says he discovered his curve in spring training this year.

Adam Hunger/Associated Press

"I always threw sliders and I don't know where this curveball came from, so it's nice having that develop," Harvey told Mike Puma of the New York Post back in early March. "I don't know if I figured out something in my mechanics or it just magically appeared, but it's nice having that and it felt good out there."

Following that groundbreaking announcement, Owen Watson of FanGraphs wrote an article outlining the potential dominance that could follow Harvey if he stayed true and actually incorporated more curves into his arsenal.

Well, it has definitely been working so far.

Harvey has thrown more curveballs than sliders so far this year, per FanGraphs, but his refinement has not stopped there.

According to Brooks Baseball, he has also added a sinker to his repertoire. Interestingly enough, he threw the sinker sparingly when he made his major league debut toward the end of the 2012 season, but he did not throw any of them in his 2013 breakout campaign.

To this point in the 2015 season, Harvey has thrown sinkers on about 9 percent of his offerings, and that just adds another wrinkle that opposing hitters must think about when they are at the plate.

And don't forget about his changeup, which he throws with more velocity than some pitchers' fastball. At about 88 miles per hour, Harvey's changeup has deceptive downward movement that has the highest whiff percentage of any of his pitches this season, per Brooks Baseball.

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Though it has only been two-plus seasons, Harvey's body of work is starting to impress a lot of people. One of those is a three-time Cy Young winner who pitched four seasons for the Mets toward the end of his career.

Pedro Martinez showered Harvey with compliments last December at the David Ortiz Celebrity Golf Classic.

Here is what Martinez answered when he was asked by Kevin Kernan of the New York Post how good Harvey can be:

"

[He's] as good as anyone in the game. He's got everything he needs. He's got toughness, he's got desire, he's got fire, he knows how to pitch, he is a competitor and he is smart. He has the entire package. Harvey is the biggest piece for that organization. I get excited when I watch him pitch.

"

Recently, Martinez dished out even more praise. In an interview promoting his new book, "Pedro," he said that Harvey can be better than he was.

"I think he has more talent than I do," Martinez said in the interview. "And he has better chances to do better than I did. 

"I'm expecting Harvey to do the same thing," he said after he described some of the steps he took to becoming great. "To study the game, to study the atmosphere around him, to study mechanics, to study all those things to become the best he could be, and the best he could be could be better than I was."

Martinez is a respected member of the baseball community, so his remarks certainly have some merit. If he is correct, Harvey is only scratching the surface of his massive potential.

Multiple Cy Young awards are likely in Harvey's future if he can stay healthy. He is that good. And as for this season, he will undoubtedly be the ace of the staff of a Mets squad—currently leading the National League East by 3.5 games—that has its sights set on a playoff berth in 2015.