PHOENIX — Jose Valverde is going to give his manager a few ulcers at this rate.
The veteran closer was summoned to protect a five-run lead in the ninth inning on Wednesday, and made life a little too interesting for the Mets by surrendering consecutive homers to the Diamondbacks’ Aaron Hill and Paul Goldschmidt to begin the inning.
At least Arizona never got the tying run to the plate. Martin Prado singled against Valverde with two outs in the inning before Cliff Pennington was retired to end the game.
“I’m worried if my team loses, that’s it,” Valverde said after the Mets’ 5-2 victory at Chase Field. “I don’t worry about me. I know I can do my job.”
Valverde was making his first appearance since Saturday, when he surrendered a three-run homer to Raul Ibanez and blew the save in the ninth inning against the Angels. The Mets won in the 13th inning on Anthony Recker’s go-ahead homer.
Valverde also had a scare earlier in the road trip, when he was called to protect a four-run lead against the Braves and loaded the bases before Jason Heyward ended the game with a fly to deep center.
On Wednesday, manager Terry Collins was determined to get work for Valverde. The Mets had scored twice in the top of the ninth to make it a non-save situation.
“He’s ready to go into the game, it’s a three-run lead and all of a sudden we get two more,” Collins said. “As I’ve seen in the past, I wish I could tell you how many times I’ve seen the edge go off those guys when you add on like that. But he’s got to pitch, he hasn’t pitched in three days and he needed to get in there.”
Collins indicated he won’t hesitate to use Valverde as closer in a tight game on Friday.
Valverde admitted there is something about a non-save situation that can make it difficult for a closer.
“Sometimes the energy is a lot different when the game is close,” he said.
The downtime since Saturday probably didn’t help, either.
“The past couple of days the closer is not pitching because it’s 9-0 or 7-3,” Valverde said. “But you have to be ready for every day. I’m not going to be ready for [Thursday] because it’s a day off.”