NEW YORK — It’s a little too early to tell if it’s a little too late.
There’s time still until the Aug. 1 trade deadline, but there are a slew of teams stacked in front of the Mets for the last wild card spot. Their playoff odds going into Wednesday night’s 5-1 win over the White Sox were at about 15%, according to FanGraphs. They’re still five games under .500, and, in fourth place and 16.5 out of first place Atlanta, the division is far out of reach.
But hope can have teams looking past the odds.
And when Justin Verlander performs like he did Wednesday, when the lineup produces, and when Brett Baty looks like he’s figured out how to shout down the doubt that threatened to consume him – well, hope is what you get.
They’re now 9-4 over their last 13.
Coming off a wild and somewhat baffling outing against the Dodgers, Verlander looked like his vintage self – mowing down the White Sox with speed and efficiency, while retiring 19 of his first 20 batters (until the seventh, the White Sox only hit was Andrew Benintendi’s leadoff fourth inning single).
Verlander allowed one run on three hits with no walks and seven strikeouts over eight innings, throwing just 100 pitches, 76 for strikes. Adam Ottavino threw a perfect ninth.
More importantly, the start showed the hallmarks of the plan the Mets hoped would key their season – relying on Verlander and Max Scherzer to dominate in a way they really haven’t been able to this year.
Meanwhile, Baty, who came into the day hitting .188 in July, cost the Mets a game with a misplay Saturday and nearly did the same Tuesday, showed some of the mental fortitude that Buck Showalter keeps hinting at. After not collecting an extra-base hit in over two weeks, Baty hit his second homer in as many days and made two strong plays at third – including one where he leapt to spear Elvis Andrus’ line drive in the eighth.
Baty kicked off the scoring in the third, teeing off on Touki Toussaint’s hanging 0-and-1 splitter, driving it 412 feet to center to give the Mets the 1-0 lead in the third.
The Mets offense, which feasted on the White Sox by scoring 11 runs the night prior, kept it going in the fourth.
Toussaint walked Pete Alonso to lead off the fourth and hit Jeff McNeil with a pitch to bring up Alvarez, who hit a seeing-eye single right to chase Alonso home. Daniel Vogelbach walked, and Baty hit into a fielder’s choice to plate McNeil and put runners in the corners with one out.
Luis Guillorme’s sacrifice fly made it 4-0, and Brandon Nimmo hit a laser double to the left-field corner to score Baty.
The White Sox didn’t touch up Verlander until the seventh, when Luis Robert Jr. pulled a just-outside slider 405-feet to left-center for the final margin.
Marte out again
Starling Marte’s migraines kept him out of his third game in five days, raising a red flag for the Mets, who had their rightfielder see a specialist Wednesday afternoon in hopes of determining the root cause for the violent headaches that have seen Marte vomiting and, at times, unable to tolerate light and sound.
Marte, who’s experienced migraines in the past but not chronically, has suffered two separate migraines in the past few days; the first kept him out of Saturday’s game against the Dodgers and the second, which hit about an hour before first pitch Tuesday, made him a late scratch then and held him from the starting lineup Wednesday.
The cluster of migraines, along with the severity of the symptoms, mean that an injured list stint isn’t out of the question, though manager Buck Showalter said it was too early to determine their next move; Jeff McNeil played in right Wednesday.
“He’s had them before but not this close,” Showalter said. “We’re going to do some tests and do some things to rule out some things…He’s had a lot of things physically. When you steal the bases he does, the way he does [that’s the result]. We just want to make sure he’s OK because sometimes these things, from what I understand, could be triggered by something else.”
Showalter added that there was some progress earlier Wednesday: “He can talk without squinting. He’s not sensitive to light and noise at this point. He’s a lot better but you can tell that he’s weak. He’s been vomiting and not able to hold anything down.”
