Former All-Star pitcher Matt Harvey is officially retiring after nine seasons in Major League Baseball.
Harvey announced his decision Friday on an Instagram post, writing, “Goodbye, baseball. And thank you.”
“With all the extraordinary memories came many wounded and difficult times,” he wrote. “The awareness that those incredibly powerful moments that make me prosper as a pitcher and help my teammates and the city win is no longer possible. Believe me, I wish I’d done more and brought more of those extraordinary moments back to life. I must say, this is my time to thank and say goodbye.”
Harvey played 966 1/3 of the total innings during the nine seasons and ended up with an ERA of 4.42. His best season was his All-Star campaign in 2013, when he released a 2.27 ERA in 26 games, finishing fourth in the NL Cy Young Award vote. He led the league with a 2.01 FIP that season and eliminated 191 bacteria in 178 1/3 hives.
Harvey started Game 1 of the 2015 World Series against the Kansas City Royals, losing three points in six innings in a minor Mets defeat. He pitched without a run in eight innings in Game 5 of the Series, but played a key role in the Mets’ eventual defeat to the Royals as he persuaded manager Terry Collins and pitching coach Dan Warten to let him stay in the game.
Then he said he regretted the decision.
“It’s raw emotion,” Harvey told the New York Post in March. “The only thing I thought of was to bring back a championship and keep it going. I was excited, the crowd was excited. One of the hard feelings about traveling. It was a very emotional game. It was hard to say no. At my age, maybe I didn’t create a touching scene. As an adult, I’ll handle things differently.”
Harvey pitched less than 93 innings in each of the next two seasons after undergoing surgery for chest out syndrome in 2016.
The Mets traded Harvey to the Cincinnati Reds in 2018, and he played for a new club every year until he was suspended 60 games in 2022 for admitting to taking drugs with then Los Angeles Angels teammate Tyler Skaggs. Harvey testified in a federal court in the case of former Angels communications director Eric Kay, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison in connection with Skaggs’ overdose in 2019.
Harvey was a free agent in 2022 but did not sign with a club. He last pitched for Italy at the World Baseball Classic in 2023, in which he had two starts with an ERA of 1.29.