Peterson Leads, Mets Follow

Two out of three from Milwaukee…where have we heard that one before? If it wasn’t quite October 2024 at American Family Field in July 2025 at Citi Field Thursday night, at least it wasn’t any more of the second half of this June seeping into this July. Maybe this July will tell a different story from what we were sadly getting used to. Or get us back to where we thought we were going until the middle of June.

It always helps to have your most reliable starting pitcher on the mound. It could be argued the Mets had their two most reliable starting pitchers of the past calendar year toeing that rubber, as David Peterson dueled Jose Quintana. The erstwhile lefty teammates carried much of the 2024 load from midseason onward. Jose then left to join our Wild Card Series enemy, but will always merit Old Friend™ affection. David, meanwhile, continued to emerge as Ace Peterson, Met Corrective. Two subpar starts haven’t detracted from his status, not when there’s been nobody else to challenge him for it. We’d welcome a challenger. We’d welcome anybody remotely capable to join the rotation. These days it’s Peterson, Clay Holmes, and fill in some blanks. Sean Manaea (a fairly reliable 2024 southpaw himself) supposedly isn’t far off from making his return. Nor is Kodai Senga. But they’re not here yet.

Few are.

Before Thursday night’s series finale, which your correspondent covered as credentialed media (meaning a furtive fist pump here, a silent boo of Rhys Hoskins there), the Mets announced Paul Blackburn was going on the IL with a right shoulder impingement, not as serious as the right elbow sprain that is also IL’ing Dedniel Nuñez. Missing Paul Blackburn will mean missing a warm body, based on his performance to date. The next three scheduled Met starters — for the Subway Series, oy gevalt — will be Justin Hagenman, Frankie Montas, and Brandon Waddell. Warm bodies are having a moment.

I found it most instructive to sit in on Carlos Mendoza’s pregame presser and listen to him retrace Blackburn’s steps from last weekend, when the righty tried to give the Mets a little more length after waiting out a rain delay in Pittsburgh. The Mets wanted, and the pitcher did his darnedest to deliver, “another 35 pitches,” which Mendy equated to “asking a lot”.

That, it occurred to me, is what this current season has come down to: somebody, anybody, please give us 35 pitches. Then maybe somebody else can throw another 35 pitches. However many innings that adds up to, just get us there, and maybe somebody else can come in, somebody we’ve heard of. Or somebody whose identity we can learn as we go along. After the Mets made their nightly flurry of moves besides the injured list additions (Hagenman and Rico Garcia are up; Blade Tidwell is down; Austin Warren, designated 27th Man on Wednesday, sticks around), it was reported the Mets signed to a major league deal reliever Zach Pop.

My reaction was, “I’ve never heard of Zach Pop.” I’d also never heard of most of the additions the Mets have made to their bullpen these past few months, even though most of them could claim anywhere from a smidgen to a modicum of MLB experience. Zach Pop has more than that; since 2021, he’s pitched in 162 games, a full season’s worth, despite my failing to notice a very noticeable name clearly destined to join our roster of very noticeable, if preternaturally obscure names. My childhood devotion to absorbing the names and faces on baseball cards notwithstanding, I’m coming to believe that just because somebody is a professional big league pitcher, it doesn’t automatically qualify him as famous.

The view from the other side of the glass.

David Peterson, on the other hand, should have his name up in lights for the way he escorted us from the darkness. In this era’s version of Koosman versus Seaver at Shea, August 1977, or perhaps Pedro versus Ollie at Citi, August 2009, this time it was the Met who remained besting the Met who went away. Quintana was pretty darn good for the Brewers, the way he was often pretty darn good for the Mets. From the first to the fifth, the only damage he incurred was a Brandon Nimmo solo home run that bounced giddily off the Cadillac Club roof in right in the second. His undoing in the sixth was of the mythic Wee Willie Keeler variety, as the top of the Met order — Starling Marte, Francisco Lindor, and jersey-giveaway inspirer Juan Soto — all hit balls where Brewer fielders weren’t. Soto’s well-placed single drove home Marte to give the Mets a 2-1 lead and chased Quintana. Versus Q’s successor, Pete Alonso immediately banged one where the left field fence most definitely was, driving in Lindor to put the Mets up, 3-1. Four consecutive hits constituted a rally straight out of magical 2024. Huzzah that it took place in hard-bitten 2025.

All Peterson had allowed through six was one unearned run, in the fourth, the result of the kind of dripping you’d expect on a night that began with a 37-minute rain delay. Nothing was hit terribly hard. Nothing fatally impeded Peterson. Having reached the point where if we can’t count on Peterson, we can’t count on any starter, we were able to count on him to get us into the seventh.

The seventh! No Met pitcher pitches into the seventh! Except for David Peterson, who’s done it a few times this year. This was a great time to do it again, despite his giving up a two-out solo home run to Andrew Monasterio and, with the last of his 103 pitches, an infield single to Sal Frelick. The good news is when your starter has taken you into the seventh, you can skip over the Poches and Pintaros and Pops and proceed directly to the back of your bullpen. That meant Ryne Stanek to get us out of the seventh and through the eighth before handing it off to Edwin Diaz for safe keeping in the ninth. Stanek and Diaz pitched Wednesday night as well. “They won’t be available Friday,” I thought. Then I added to my thoughts, “There is never any tomorrow with this team and this bullpen. Just take care of tonight, and we’ll bring up three more mysterious arms to deal with what comes.”

Stanek did his part to keep it Mets 3 Brewers 2. Diaz struck out his first batter before giving up a Wee Willie special to pinch-hitter Christian Yelich, who made soft but clever contact. Yelich being on first implied Yelich might very well be on second, given that Diaz isn’t a fanatic about holding on baserunners. Fortunately, he’s been working on getting the ball to the plate sooner, and, more fortunately, he had Luis Torrens catching and throwing once Yelich took off; he had Lindor catching and tagging once Yelich slid; and he had replay review seeing how many stitches on a baseball can dance on the head of a pin.

Yelich was initially called safe on a very, very close play. Lindor was adamant the Mets challenge. The Mets did their own due diligence and went along with their shortstop’s judgment that he tagged Yelich’s leg before Yelich’s hand touched second. The challenge was on. I watched replays on the enormous screen in distant center as well as the nearby monitors in the press box. I saw nothing that indicated there was any reason the out call wouldn’t stand.

But somebody in Midtown saw something. What appeared too inconclusive to overturn got overturned. Yelich went from being the tying run on second to the second out. An instant later, Diaz resumed striking out Brewers to end the game in the Mets’ favor.

On nights the Mets have just enough pitching, just enough hitting, and an extra dollop of defense, it’s as if they’re the Mets again. Not the Mets we’ve been thinking they were, but the Mets we were thinking they were before that. I realize it can be difficult to tell them apart. The Mets they were Thursday are the Mets who have a handful of relief pitchers you couldn’t pick out of a sellout crowd, but aren’t compelled to use them.