Mets: Matt Harvey to start on Friday against Houston Astros

The Dark Knight will be back out on the mound on Friday as he faces off against the Astros

The Mets announced on Monday evening that Matt Harvey will be activated off the disabled list ahead of Friday night’s game against the Houston Astros. Harvey has been sidelined since mid-June when he was diagnosed with a stress injury to the scapula bone in the right shoulder.

In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, the Mets-Astros series (which was originally scheduled to be played in Houston, Texas) has been moved to Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida. It will be the second series the AL West-leading Astros play away from home after they face off against the Texas Rangers earlier this week.

For Harvey, this will be his 14th start of the year. Like a few other Mets players, he’s suffered his worst season statistically to date, and has been hit by injuries quite a bit as well. He’s posted a 5.25 ERA over 70 1/3 innings and while he’s kept his hits down to 63 over that span, the lack of strikeouts and increase in walks and the long ball have been his biggest issues.

He’s only struck out 52 hitters over those 70+ innings and has walked 35 batters and allowed 16 home runs.. None of these numbers are vintage Harvey, and the results have been obvious because of them.

Next: Yoenis Cespedes done for the year with hamstring strain

Harvey is going into 2018 as his last year of arbitration with free agency looming after. He needs to be able to show that he can once again perform like the Harvey of old if he wants to cash in at all next offseason. To achieve that, he’ll have to either find a way to throw in the upper 90s again (which doesn’t seem likely based on his rehab appearances) or find a way to change the way he pitches and turn into more of a location and finesse type of guy. Will he be able to do that? That’ll be the real question next season.