NEW YORK -- If the Mets make the playoffs, advance through October and win the World Series, David Peterson will have been a significant part of that success. Over the first half of this season, he was the Mets’ best starting pitcher. At times, it wasn’t all that close. Peterson was a deserving National League All-Star who helped the Mets jump out to the best record in baseball from March through mid-June.
Since then, however, Peterson has been a microcosm of everything that’s gone wrong in Flushing. On June 11, two days before everything began to turn for the Mets, Peterson threw a six-hit shutout to lower his ERA to 2.49.
In 16 starts since, he has a 5.34 ERA. It’s a trend that has only worsened recently; after giving up six more runs Wednesday in a 7-4 loss to the Padres, Peterson raised his ERA to 7.59 over his last eight outings.
All of this begs the question: Can the Mets trust Peterson to start postseason games for them?
For weeks, the answer has been trending toward no. After limiting the Padres to two runs over the first four innings of Wednesday’s defeat, Peterson loaded the bases in the fifth on a hit batter, a walk and an infield hit. He then ran the count full on Manny Machado, who pulled a low curveball over the fence in left-center for a game-breaking grand slam.
Although the Mets fought back in the later innings, nearly tying things on a potential Juan Soto homer that landed just foul, Peterson had thrust them in too deep of a hole. The loss narrowed New York’s lead for the final NL Wild Card spot to 1 1/2 games over the Diamondbacks, and two over the Reds and Giants. The former two teams hold a tiebreaker over the Mets, while the latter boasts one of the easiest final-week schedules in the league.
“We’ve got to get going today,” Soto said. “We cannot wait for tomorrow, because tomorrow is going to be too late.”
As Soto knows, the Mets’ inability to pull away from the pack could haunt them. Their rotation has been the most significant culprit, with Peterson a massive part of that.
"It’s obviously tough when you know what you’re capable of,” Peterson said. “You’re going to go through times when it’s not going exactly how you want it to, whether it’s baseball or whether it’s something you’re not necessarily executing. But you can’t hold onto it.”
Certainly, Peterson isn’t the only one at fault -- this staff has been so inconsistent that when Dom Hamel made his Major League debut in relief of Peterson, he broke a Major League record by becoming the team’s 46th pitcher this season.
As the team descends into its final 10 games of the campaign, every outing becomes a postseason audition.
If the playoffs began today and Mets officials had the luxury of lining things up perfectly, Nolan McLean would be their clear choice to start Game 1 of the Wild Card Series. Brandon Sproat would also receive serious consideration for a start, leaving the Mets with four options for the third game: Jonah Tong, Sean Manaea, Clay Holmes and Peterson.
Unless Tong pitches markedly better over his next two starts than he did in his previous two, he will probably land on the outside of that bubble. The Mets liked the way Manaea’s piggyback outing with Holmes looked on Tuesday and will likely reverse that order Sunday against the Nationals, with Manaea starting and Holmes relieving. In general, team officials have been encouraged by the strides Manaea has made over the last week, giving him as good a chance as anyone to nail down a spot.
No matter what the Mets decide, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to envision Peterson in that mix -- but time will tell. For now, manager Carlos Mendoza confirmed only that Peterson will remain part of this rotation for the stretch run. Until the Mets actually qualify for the postseason, that’s all that really matters in their eyes.
"We trust him and all of the guys that are here,” Mendoza said. “We’ve only got what, 10 more to go in the regular season here? We need him. He’s been a big part of this team. But it’s been a struggle for him.”