TEMPE, Ariz. -- Right-hander Matt Harvey sustained a glute strain while participating in agility drills on Wednesday and will be out for roughly a week and a half, Angels manager Brad Ausmus said Thursday.
Harvey, who signed a one-year deal worth $11 million this past offseason, should have enough time to get ready for the start of the season but will be behind the other starters early in camp.
"You can recover from a week and a half," Ausmus said. "It's just about how he feels when we reevaluate him. He can recover."
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"It's a very slight strain, so it's nothing serious and they don't want it to linger," said Harvey, who clarified that it's his left glute. "During the season, I could probably take some anti-inflammatories and could keep playing. But this early in spring, we want it to be completely out of the way."
Harvey's injury isn't considered serious and he's ready to show he still has something left, as the former Mets ace saw his velocity improve after joining the Reds last May. He went 7-7 with a 4.50 ERA and 111 strikeouts, 28 walks and 21 homers allowed in 128 innings over 24 starts with Cincinnati after being acquired from New York on May 8. His fastball averaged 92.6 mph in his eight appearances with the Mets early in the year, but it improved to 94.4 mph with the Reds, which is right in line with his early career.
It was a nice bounceback for Harvey, who has undergone a number of operations in recent years, including Tommy John surgery, thoracic outlet syndrome surgery and scapula surgery.
"To go out in Cincinnati and put up some innings, have some good success, feel the ball coming out like I remember it, and then having a normal offseason to work on pitching and getting stronger and having a normal offseason again, it was nice," Harvey said. "From what I learned in Cincinnati and keeping everything exactly the same, my routine was much better. My workouts were much better, bullpens were much better and it just helped everything out."
Harvey said he learned a lot from his success with the Mets and his ultimate downfall with the organization, as he believed he took it too easy after his good starts and wasn't putting the right amount of work in.
"When things were going great, you kind of get comfortable," Harvey said. "It was something that I look back on now and wish that I had you know, when you have a bad start, you go in the weight room. I wish I had gone back after good starts and gotten after it a little bit more."
Harvey also admitted that a lot of his issues while with the Mets were self-created and that he's learned from his past mistakes, including how to better handle failure.
"The competitiveness that people may think that I was fighting against, [it was] something where I was really just fighting against myself," Harvey said. "It was me who was disappointed in what I was not able to bring to the team and to the city of New York at the time. It was me who was beating myself up. That was the tough part. Another life lesson learned, not lash out and do things that I did, but you learn from them and you move on."
Harvey, 29, said he has high hopes for this season and believes he can get back to being closer to the pitcher he was before injuries derailed his career. He also added that he plans to be a mentor to younger Angels pitchers so they don't make the same mistakes he did early in his career.
"That's part of the spark and fire you can light and relight," Harvey said. "It's about going out and performing. You can always want to get back to where I was before or pitching in the World Series, but you have to go out and do it. You can think it, but you have to go do it."