WASHINGTON — The kids offer the encouragement, and only partially because of what they can do in the immediate. There was Zack Wheeler on Monday night, grinding through 6 ²/₃, absent his optimal arsenal, later drawing praise for his guile and his toughness.
Here is Jacob deGrom, Thursday’s starter, fresh from a gem against the Giants five days ago, suddenly the one pitcher in whom the Mets have absolute faith will keep them in games every time out. This after a major-league career that spans exactly 15 starts and 94 innings.
Down on the farm, out in Vegas, there is Rafael Montero, pounding the strike zone again, eight innings of one-hit ball for him Tuesday night, and there’s Noah Syndergaard, going today for the 51s, who has allowed one earned run in his last three games. And, of course, there was Matt Harvey, sweating through his shirt on a mound in Port St. Lucie for 20 hard tosses Tuesday, the ghost that has loomed all year.
The kids, they have been all right.
It’s the older guys who are a concern right now, on so many levels. Bartolo Colon is impossible to figure, near-perfect one start, a human batting tee the next. Dillon Gee looked on the verge of taking a leap across the season’s first few weeks, got hurt, hasn’t been near the same since.
And then there is Jon Niese, the dean of the staff, old enough that he actually pitched in meaningful September games as a rookie in 2008, young enough that he is still not yet 28, born the day of the Mets’ most meaningful game in 45 years, the night they won the 1986 World Series.
In an ideal world, Niese holds the key to so much of what the Mets can do in the coming months, as they try to run through the tape of the 2014 season, as they start the dash toward ’15. In an ideal world, Niese would be taking the final few steps toward the head of the line of National League lefties, non-Kershaw division. And that would leave the Mets two splendid options:
Install him as the veteran soul of next year’s staff, surround him with four kids, deal Gee and Colon for as much of a haul as two reliable right-handers can yield.
Use him as a prime offseason chip, perhaps packaged with one of the other vets, perhaps with one of the kids, and make the kind of serious deal big-boy ballclubs make, the kind that harbor championship ambitions for themselves.
That’s the script.
But for now, Niese isn’t following the script, ad-libbing and flubbing his lines like Richard Burton on a bender. Wednesday he was whacked around again by the Nationals, allowing six runs, seeing his ERA expand by nearly half a run, falling to 0-4 with a grisly 5.76 ERA since returning from the disabled list after the All-Star break.
“Frustrating,” was how he termed it after the Mets’ 7-1 loss, and it certainly was. For the Mets, though, the true disappointment came in how Niese described his night: “I’m at a point now where my stuff is back and my arm feels great.”
So he is healthy, and he was on his game, and the Nats still had three on the board before their fifth batter stepped to the plate, and they still left Niese muttering to himself as he left the game, and so he still has the Mets in a quandary as they try to figure out what their plans can be in trying to build momentum for 2014.
It’s almost certain that one of the fab five will need to be packaged, probably two if Montero is one of them. That can change if Niese finds himself the way he did late in last season, when he put together that long string of outings in which he never gave up more than three earned runs. He has a user-friendly contract, he’s left-handed, and won’t turn 30 until October 2016. He should be attractive bait.
Assuming he starts to get guys out again. The Mets would like that so they could win a few games the rest of this season. And so they might be in position, one way or another, to win a few more next year. With him or without him. But he has to start being better than this. Quick.