ST. LOUIS — Just before the start of the third inning, Matt Harvey trudged from the Mets dugout to the bullpen beyond left field. When Zack Wheeler, the Mets’ starter on Tuesday night, began to sputter an inning later, the bullpen phone rang for Harvey. And in the fifth, Harvey took the mound, beginning his new life as a reliever.
Harvey, who inherited a tie game after Yoenis Cespedes’s three-run homer in the fifth, showed the same old inconsistencies in his new role, and he gave up a tiebreaking double to Paul DeJong in the fifth.
But the Mets’ offense spared him from a loss.