By Anthony DiComo | 36 minutes ago
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NEW YORK – One way for Justin Verlander to silence trade talks is to carry on exactly as he did Wednesday night.
The logic goes something like this: If the Mets are even remotely involved in a National League wildcard contest in the days leading up to the August 1 trade deadline, they have reason to keep their roster intact in hopes of a late playoff entry to keep. For the Mets to even come close to wild card competition, Verlander and Max Scherzer will need to do their best.
Verlander played his part in a 5-1 win over the White Sox at Citi Field and held Chicago on a fairly efficient 100 pitches to a run for eight innings. He tallyed seven strikeouts, allowed three hits and a walk, and he might have thrown an entire game had it not been for a bumpy 30-pitch seventh that included a solo home run from Luis Robert Jr.
“I kept getting closer and closer to my goal,” said Verlander, who lowered his ERA to 1.74 in his last five starts.
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The improvement hasn’t been linear for the 40-year-old Verlander, who spent April on the injured list and much of May and June was inconsistent, struggling with his mechanics, slider feel and at times control. But it all worked out on Wednesday when Verlander knocked out three of the first four batsmen he faced and relied on early contact the rest of the way. His defense helped. With an out in the third inning, Brett Baty made a backhand play on the run to avoid an infield hit by Oscar Colás. In the fourth set, Jeff McNeil made a running grab in right field to take a hit from Tim Anderson.
When Verlander started struggling in the seventh inning and threw more than 14 pitches in an inning for the first time all night, the Mets had a solid lead thanks to Baty’s leadoff home run in the third inning and a four-run fourth run against the White Sox Starter Touki Toussaint. Francisco Alvarez drove one run during that rally, taking his team-leading monthly total to 14 RBIs in July.
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But Alvarez’s most significant contribution came behind the plate, where he caught Verlander’s best start of the season.
“Yeah, he had his good stuff tonight,” White Sox first baseman Gavin Sheets said. “It’s just a veteran who threw the ball well.”
The result was the third straight win for the Mets, who won a game against the Phillies and were just seven games away from a National League wildcard berth. While this may seem insignificant with more than two months left in the regular season, it has real implications for how the Mets could hit the trade deadline in less than two weeks. If the path to the postseason seems out of reach as the deadline nears, general manager Billy Eppler will likely sell assets to improve the organization through 2024. However, if there is a glimmer of hope, the Mets could choose not to sell, or even become modest buyers.
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Verlander, whose name has cropped up in trade rumors despite his unwieldy contract and no-trade clause, is at the center of the action. So does Scherzer, who also had his best start of the season in the last game against the Dodgers with seven scoreless innings.
“I think everyone knows when the trade deadline is,” Verlander said. “No one has given any indication as to what exactly we are going to do. I think we need to stay together here in the clubhouse and continue to do what we’ve been doing, which is coming here every day with optimism, doing what we can do individually to win a ball game and doing what we do we can do as a club group to win a ball game and see how far that takes us.”
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This six-game week against the White Sox and Red Sox — each ranked fourth in their divisions — felt like the Mets’ last chance to prove themselves before the deadline. After two games it is 2-0.
It’s not a panacea, but it’s certainly a start.
“I don’t think you can look at a specific point in time and say, ‘Okay, you have to do it.’ “You have to do it now,” Verlander said. “I think we’ve been saying that all year. You never want to wait. You dig yourself into a hole and you have to dig yourself out again.”
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