NEW YORK — A bizarre season for the New York Mets took another hairpin turn Sunday morning when the team announced it had suspended right-hander Matt Harvey three days without pay for a violation of team rules.Harvey originally was scheduled to start the series finale against the Miami Marlins on Sunday afternoon.Neither general manager Sandy Alderson nor manager Terry Collins identified the violation. Alderson said Harvey, whose suspension began Saturday, was sent home.”There’s things with this job that certainly are internal, that the public can’t see and (understand) how hard it is,” Collins told reporters. “And this one’s a tough one. We hope to put it behind us and move forward.”Collins’ pre-game press conference was far briefer than usual. Afterward, he held a closed-door meeting with the Mets (14-15), whose lineup Sunday will be missing four Opening Day position players.First baseman Lucas Duda, catcher Travis d’Arnaud and left fielder Yoenis Cespedes are all on the disabled list while shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera is day-to-day with a left thumb injury.”Anytime you get a chance to not have somebody with you, it’s not the way you want it to be, regardless of what the reason is,” Mets outfielder Curtis Granderson said. “Unfortunately that’s going to be something that happens in a season. We’ve seen it up to this point. This isn’t the first guy that’s not going to be with us when we take the field, for whatever reason.”This is not the first off-field drama involving Harvey, who appeared to be New York’s next big sports star when he started for the National League in the All-Star Game at Citi Field and earned the nickname “The Dark Knight of Gotham.”Harvey underwent Tommy John surgery in October 2013 that cost him all of 2014, when he knocked heads with the Mets over where he would rehab. The right-hander, who resides in Manhattan and is a staple of the gossip pages, was eventually allowed to spend time in New York instead of at the team’s spring training facility in Florida.Harvey fought the Mets’ plans to shut him down for all of 2014 and earned a tongue-lashing from Collins when he appeared on a local radio station — during a game — and said he hoped to pitch at some level late in the season.Harvey made 29 regular-season starts in 2015 but was embroiled in controversy in September when he said he believed he had a 180-inning limit in his first post-surgery season. He missed the Mets’ first workout of the postseason after he said he overslept.Despite the so-called innings limit, Harvey made four postseason starts for the Mets — he threw 216 innings between the regular season and playoffs — and was on the mound in Game 5 of the World Series, when he threw eight shutout innings before convincing Collins to let him pitch the ninth instead of turning the ball over to closer Jeurys Familia with a two-run lead. But Harvey gave up a walk and a double to start the inning and the Royals tied the game before eventually clinching the championship with a 12-inning win.Harvey was 4-10 with a 4.86 ERA in 14 starts last season before undergoing surgery to repair thoracic outlet syndrome. He is 2-2 with a 5.14 ERA in six starts this season.
