Mets right-hander Matt Harvey was suspended from the team for three days for violating team rules, general manager Sandy Alderson announced Sunday.
Harvey was scheduled to start against the Marlins in the finale of a three-game series at Citi Field. Adam Wilk was brought up from Triple-A Las Vegas to take his place.
A grim-faced Alderson made a short statement and did not take any questions at a morning briefing. "Matt Harvey has been suspended for three days without pay for violation of club rules," he said. "And has been sent home. He will not start today." Harvey's suspension started Saturday, so he is expected to return to the team Tuesday.
"We're not going into in depth," Mets manager Terry Collins said. "We're going to keep it in house. Where it's supposed to be. There's things with this job, certainly are internal the public can't see how hard it is. And this one's a tough one. We hope to put it behind us and move forward. To be honest there were some moves made (Saturday) night because we felt this might occur that we had to protect our pitching staff a little bit.
"The fun part about this job starts at 7:05 or 1:10. There are things that go on that you deal with every day that make the job difficult but you know it comes with the territory. This is one of those instances. Sandy said it all. We're just going to move past it and hopefully in a short period of time we can get back to normal."
Harvey, 28, is 2-2 with a 5.14 ERA in his first season back after thoracic outlet syndrome.
Harvey has had two other known dustups in his Mets career. There was an innings-limit issue that caused disagreement between the team and Harvey's agent, Scott Boras, in September 2015. Then, on Oct. 6 of that year, Harvey showed up late for a workout and said he "screwed up," and apologized to his teammates.
Collins addressed the team before the game and if he told the players of Harvey's transgression, they weren't divulging it.
"Anytime you have someone who is not in the lineup for any reason there's going to be a number of different reasons over the course of the season you want to be able to have all your guys with you but unfortunately that's one of the things that ends up happening," Curtis Granderson said.
