Verlander — and the Mets — at a pivotal crossroads

It wasn’t supposed to be like this when Justin Verlander finally made it to New York. He wasn’t supposed to be pitching for a sub-.500 team at the end of July, his team as far away from the third Wild Card in the National League as the Mets currently are. Verlander wasn’t supposed to see the Mets trade their closer, David Robertson, nearly a week before the Trade Deadline.

And Verlander certainly couldn’t have thought when he signed with the Mets that there would be this kind of speculation that his 16th start for them, against the Nationals on Sunday afternoon at Citi Field, might turn out to be his last in a Mets uniform.

Yet here we are, with all the speculation that Verlander might be gone and Max Scherzer, his old Tigers teammate who has won the same three Cy Young Awards that Verlander has, might be gone.

The season started with great promise for the Mets coming off a 101-victory season, even though their star closer, Edwin Díaz, injured his right knee during the World Baseball Classic. We saw the way Scherzer can throw it on Friday night against the Nationals. We see how Verlander has thrown over his last six starts. But now the Mets may be throwing in the towel, if the trade of Robertson to the Marlins is any indication.

Everybody hears the rumors about the 40-year old Verlander, even as he is playing out a first-year contract with the Mets worth around $43 million. He might go back to Texas and pitch for the Rangers. He might even go back to Texas and pitch for his old team, the Astros. Or he might stay right where he is, chasing 300 victories with the Mets if he stays healthy.

Here are the numbers from Verlander’s last six starts:

Five innings against the Brewers — five hits, no earned runs, five strikeouts. Seven innings against the Giants — five hits, no earned runs, six strikeouts. Six innings against the Padres — five hits, two earned runs, two strikeouts. Five innings against the Dodgers — five hits, three earned runs, six strikeouts. Eight innings against the White Sox — three hits, one earned run, seven strikeouts. Finally, six dazzling shutout innings against the Yankees last Tuesday night at Yankee Stadium.

It took some time after starting the season on the injured list, but Verlander has finally gotten himself right. If Sunday’s start is his last for the Mets, or if he already made his final start for them against the Yankees, a great old line from a great old New York sportswriter named Frank Graham might apply to Verlander: He might finally be saying hello in New York when it’s time to say goodbye.

No one knows if the Mets really will trade him. Nobody knows anything this time of year in baseball until somebody does something. Nobody could have known in the runup to the All-Star break, when the Mets showed signs of life with a 6-game winning streak, that before the month was out they would be trading their closer for a couple of Minor League teenagers. But there Robertson is, in Miami. Here the Mets and Justin Verlander are, and Max Scherzer, too.

Last Tuesday night at the Stadium, the Mets looked like the team we thought they would be this season. Verlander pitched the way he pitched, and Pete Alonso — who had been in what Keith Hernandez once described as the “deep, dark forest” of a slump — hit two home runs. On Friday night, Scherzer gave the Nationals just one run over seven innings and Alonso hit two more long home runs, and the Mets once again looked like the team we thought they would be.

But now one of their veteran aces could be traded, or both of them could be traded. There’s a play in London called “The Play Goes Wrong” that has run for more than a decade. With two months to go in the season, that’s been the 2023 Mets.

After Friday night’s game, I mentioned to Mets manager Buck Showalter about how well Verlander has pitched over the past month.

“Oh yeah,” Showalter said. “Still got that talented hand. Can still manipulate the ball. Great angle. Still has four pitches.”

Verlander has won those three Cy Young Awards in cities other than New York. He won two World Series with the Astros over the past six years. He is the one who changed everything in the American League in 2017, when Houston acquired him in a blockbuster trade with the Tigers. At 40, he has already won 249 games in his career.

Late Friday night, Buck added this one last line when talking about what he’s seen recently from Verlander:

“Still chasing perfection.”

But now the question is this:

Where does he chase it from here?