With the drama behind him, Matt Harvey ready to start World Series Game 1

(Getty Images) KANSAS CITY, Mo. — There was a moment, back in September, back when the New York Mets’ postseason trajectory was looking increasingly promising, that Matt Harvey decided enough was enough.

Enough with the talk about the innings limit. Enough with the he-said, he-said game going on between himself, the New York Mets and his agent, the ever-powerful Scott Boras. Enough with the idea that the Mets would be playing in October and his role would be reduced.

“The last thing I ever wanted to do is put the ball down,” Harvey said Monday, on the eve of Game 1 of the World Series, in which he’ll grab that ball and start for the Mets.

The bickering with the front office? Gone (at least publicly). The innings limit? Well, he’s up to 202 now and nobody’s called the Tommy John Police. The Boras Show? It’s gone quiet.

Harvey is where we figured he’d be one day. He just got here sooner. Game 1. The World Series. The biggest game of his life and while we’ll still be counting pitches, that debacle between he and the Mets is as much in the past as the almost-Carlos Gomez trade.

“We kind of cleared that up at the end,” said Mets manager Terry Collins. “It goes back to after the [Sept. 20] Yankee game. We met, we took him right out after five. Pitching great. Couple days later he walked in and said, ‘Listen, we’re going to get in the postseason and I’ve got to be ready, and I’m not ready.’ He said, ‘My next two starts I’ve got to throw at least 100 pitches to get myself back where I need to be.’ I said, ‘Well, we need to address a few things, talk to a few other people.’ And Sandy [Alderson, the Mets’ GM] and I met, and Sandy said, ‘It’s his call. If he thinks he needs to do that, we’ll try to get him read.’ And we did. It’s pretty much been Matt and me ever since. I don’t think we’ve needed to go elsewhere. As long as I know he’s ready to go.”

This put in the past a tabloid-ready drama in which Harvey, who was coming off Tommy John surgery, and Boras disagreed publicly with the Mets about his use this season. All of a sudden, in early September, with the playoffs on the horizon, came talk of an innings limit. The Mets said, as far as they knew, there was only a “soft” innings cap. Soon, Harvey was being called Cinderella instead of the Dark Knight and drama was swirling around a Mets team that had vastly surpassed expectations.

Rather than being engulfed in the type of public fight that could forever sour a team’s relationship with a star player, things got worked out. They’ve been cautious with him in the postseason, but he’s thrown 97 pitches in each of his starts. He racked up 7 2/3 innings against the Chicago Cubs in a stellar NLCS appearance, in which he struck out nine. He threw five innings in the NLDS against the Los Angeles Dodgers. It wasn’t peak Harvey (he allowed seven hits and three runs), but the Mets won 13-7.

Keep in mind, this is a player who has shown that he loves the New York spotlight and had no problem disagreeing with the Mets’ front office about his Tommy John rehab and when he’d return to game action.

But in baseball, it’s the end result that matters. And Harvey is here, in the World Series, leading the rotation, with a chance to be Gotham’s super hero rather than a fragile-as-a-glass-slipper diva pitcher.

“As a human being, besides being an athlete, your career and your health [are] always a natural thing to worry about,” Harvey said. “I think there was some people that threw me under the bus a little bit about what was going on. But being out here with my teammates is all I want and I couldn’t be happier to be with them here now.”

More MLB coverage from Yahoo Sports:

– – – – – – –

Mike Oz is the editor of Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz

Sharing is caring! Share this FreeWinningPicks post with your friends!