Max Scherzer looks like vintage self as Mets beat Astros in laugher
HOUSTON — A few minutes before the game started, Justin Verlander briefly peered into his past in accepting his 2022 World Series ring.
He then left the field and soon was replaced by his co-ace, who continued a theme of reflecting on earlier greatness.
Because on one night — though he hopes for many more — Max Scherzer looked like the future Hall of Famer whom the Mets made their $130 million man.
Scherzer saved his best start of the season and his longest as a Met for the defending world champs, silencing the Astros in an 11-1 laugher on Monday at Minute Maid Park that was well-timed for the star and his club.
The Mets (34-38) showed some hope to begin a six-game road trip that will go from Texas to Philadelphia.
They have a pulse after winning just their fourth game in the past 15 and beating the Astros for the first time in their past eight head-to-head matchups.
A pair of five-run frames helped.
As did Francisco Lindor’s five RBIs. But the Mets have Scherzer — whose ERA fell from 4.45 to 4.04 — to thank most for the series-opening destruction.
For a third start in a row, the Mets staked Scherzer to a significant lead, but for a first time in that span he held it.
Scherzer allowed just five base runners and one run in eight excellent and efficient innings.
He had not recorded an eighth-inning out in his first 34 starts with the Mets.
“We were in a real need [for Scherzer] to get deep in that game,” manager Buck Showalter said, his club playing one reliever short because of Drew Smith’s 10-game suspension. “For him to go eight innings, that was pretty special in a lot of ways.”
On June 7, his offense gave Scherzer a three-run, fifth-inning edge that he flushed. In the loss in Atlanta, Scherzer’s changeup abandoned him.
For last Tuesday’s start, he tweaked the changeup, which he said led to an inadvertent tweak to his slider.
The Mets handed Scherzer a 5-1 advantage that evaporated in the fourth inning in a loss to the Yankees, in large part because his slider went missing.
Finally, he put together his entire arsenal in a 91-pitch, eight-strikeout masterpiece.
“When I can pitch with all my pitches, that’s when I’m at my best,” said Scherzer, who had everything working but finished off batters with his slider.
Of Scherzer’s first eight sliders, seven were strikes, including five swings and misses.
The same pitch that induced just one whiff from the Yankees last week this time drew seven empty cuts.
Houston did not get its first hit until Jeremy Pena singled in the third inning.
The Astros did not get a runner into scoring position until the sixth, when Martin Maldonado and Alex Bregman singled.
But with two outs, Scherzer bore down.
With the Mets up six runs and the Astros threatening for the first time, Scherzer threw what might have been his nastiest slider of the game, a Wiffle ball that tied up Kyle Tucker for a swinging strike three.
Scherzer finally was dented in the seventh, when Yainer Diaz hammered a hanging slider for a home run, but that marked the end of the Astros’ scoring.
Everything was working in Scherzer’s favor, including his mistakes.
Bregman’s crushed ground ball in the first inning became an out because a diving Brett Baty stabbed it. Maldonado’s swatted line drive in the third was directed right at left fielder Tommy Pham.
Because Scherzer was brilliant, the Mets’ defense sound and their offense loud — including a pair of five-run innings in the third and ninth, highlighted by Lindor’s three-run homer and two-run double, and Daniel Vogelbach’s second home run in his past four games — the Mets only needed one inning from their bullpen.
Grant Hartwig, who was called up earlier in the day, made his major league debut in a scoreless ninth.
“Those guys have been getting stepped on a lot,” Scherzer said of a bullpen that has relied heavily upon David Robertson and Adam Ottavino, who allowed Sunday’s go-ahead home run to St. Louis’ Nolan Arenado. “It’s our job to go out there and pitch deep. Frankly, I haven’t been doing that the past couple starts.”
A team and player as talented as the Mets and Scherzer, respectively, have sought any sign they are about to get going.
Maybe, from Houston, the club’s and Scherzer’s seasons can lift off.
