Matt Harvey's college experience offers hope for Phils prospects

NEW YORK - Matt Harvey was dressed and on his way out of the Mets clubhouse at Citi Field late Wednesday night when he stopped to consider the consequences of the choice that changed his life and career.

He will pitch against Cole Hamels and the Phillies on Friday, arriving as Major League Baseball's best starter and the biggest star in its biggest market: a 5-0 record, a 2.41 earned run average, 34 strikeouts in 332/3 innings, an average of 40,450 people in attendance for each of his last four outings. But even if Harvey promises to scythe the Phillies hitters and draw an uncomfortable number of New York baseball fans to Citizens Bank Park, his rapid rise to dominance can still offer a sliver of hope to the Phillies for their future.

The only reason that the Mets had the opportunity to select Harvey with the seventh overall pick in the 2010 draft was that life-changing choice he'd made three years earlier. The Los Angeles Angels had picked him in the third round of the 2007 draft out of Fitch High School in Connecticut. Instead of signing with the Angels, Harvey decided to go to the University of North Carolina. He spent three years at Chapel Hill, developing as much as a man as he did as a pitcher, providing the perfect template for what the Phillies want to accomplish as they restock their farm system's pitching supply.

"I wasn't ready when I was 18, 19 years old," Harvey said after the Mets' 5-1 victory over the Baltimore Orioles on Wednesday. "I needed those three years to mature and grow up, get a routine. You had to go to class. You had to have a schedule. And for me, that was important. College was the best decision I could make. It put me in a better position for playing in New York and in the big leagues."

The Phillies are counting on many of their prospects' tracing the same arc. Through their first 10 picks in last year's draft, they selected nine college players, five of whom were pitchers, including first-rounder Aaron Nola. They also acquired Tom Windle (who pitched at the University of Minnesota) from the Dodgers in the Jimmy Rollins trade and Ben Lively (a Central Florida alumnus) from the Reds for Marlon Byrd. All of these moves were made under the theory that a college pitcher might reach the majors faster than a high school kid would.

Every pitcher's path to excellence is his own, of course; the Phillies drafted Hamels out of San Diego's Rancho Bernardo High in 2002, for instance, and he turned out OK. But Harvey's history would seem to lend at least a little credibility to the approach that the franchise is employing now.

He started more games at UNC (54) than he did in the minor leagues (46) before the Mets called him up in 2012, and by staying in school for three years, he afforded himself the chance to recover from a miserable sophomore season without the pressure of believing his big-league career was at stake.

In 2009, Harvey lost the ability to repeat his delivery and struggled, posting a 5.40 ERA and giving up 88 hits and 42 walks over 75 innings. The following year, he rediscovered his arm slot and, in turn, his power fastball, going 8-3 and lowering his ERA to 3.09. Based on Harvey's pure talent and family background - his parents are both teachers - the Mets scouts saw him as a top-of-the-rotation starter who wouldn't need much time to marinate in the minors, despite his step backward as a sophomore.

"It's the analytics," said former Phillies and Mets pitcher Nelson Figueroa, now an analyst for SportsNet New York. "They can project something for the next two levels and how it will play out in the major leagues, and they're doing more research in getting to know the player. You know his family situation.

"When I first came up, the Mets had a kid whose parents traveled with him everywhere he went. Shortstop. Got a nice signing bonus. But he'd never been away from mom and dad. They traveled to all the little Podunk towns. They lived a really affluent lifestyle and said, 'We'll take care of him.' He lasted one year, and he was gone."

If there was no risk that Harvey's temperament was too soft, his heavy workload at North Carolina did raise concerns that, sooner or later, he'd suffer a serious arm injury. And he did, tearing the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow in 2013, undergoing Tommy John surgery, sitting out the entire 2014 season - only to hit 99 m.p.h. on the radar gun in his first game back this season. The Phillies had all those aces in 2011 - Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Hamels, Roy Oswalt - but in New York Harvey stands alone, each of his starts inspiring the same anticipation and excitement that Dwight Gooden's did in 1984 and 1985.

"Honestly, I think that the buzz here eclipses that of Roy, Cliff, Cole, anything that I've seen," said Mets outfielder John Mayberry Jr., a member of that 2011 Phillies team. "It's like a rock star's going out there."

The latest tour stop is at Citizens Bank Park, and Matt Harvey promises to put the Phillies through hell Friday. Beyond that one night, though, they're betting that his path to greatness might give them some hope that help really is on the way.

@MikeSielski