NEW YORK -- Even if the Mets are not able to make a spirited comeback up the National League East standings -- a prospect that grows increasingly unlikely by the day -- Carlos Carrasco can at least use the next five weeks to ease some of New York’s long-term rotation questions.
Carrasco delivered easily his deepest and best start of the season on Thursday night, holding the Giants to two runs over seven innings in New York's 3-2 loss at Citi Field. Once again, it wasn’t enough for the Mets, who have now lost 18 of their past 24 games to fall a season-high 7 1/2 games out of first in the NL East, a stretch that included dropping 11 of 13 to the Giants and Dodgers. But Carrasco’s outing at least gave the Mets hope for brighter horizons.
“This is the way that I want to be,” Carrasco said.
Entering the night, Carrasco had allowed 13 runs over his previous eight innings, spanning three starts. Far from the quality option the Mets thought they were receiving alongside Francisco Lindor in their blockbuster offseason trade with Cleveland, Carrasco had struggled since missing the first four months of the year due to a torn right hamstring.
But Carrasco rebounded against MLB’s most prolific power-hitting offense, despite a first-inning two-run homer from Kris Bryant on what Carrasco called “a really bad pitch.”
After that, Carrasco retired seven straight batters and 20 of the final 21 he faced, slicing his ERA from 8.82 to 6.94. Carrasco’s previous season high was only five innings, which came in his last start, due in part to the fact that he has been getting stretched out on the fly.
Now capable of assuming a regular starter’s workload again, Carrasco looks far more like the pitcher who went 68-43 with a 3.27 ERA in 159 games from 2014-18. He allowed only two hits other than Bryant’s homer and issued no walks.
“Man, he was lights-out tonight,” Mets manager Luis Rojas said. “His fastball velocity spiked up to 96 [mph], so I thought that did a lot. Even the slider that Bryant hit for a homer, that was a really hard slider. Overall, you take that away, it was just a lights-out outing. It was the Carlos Carrasco that we know and that we expect to show every time he gets the ball.”
If Carrasco can keep pitching well, he can at least let the Mets head into the offseason without worry that he will be a productive member of their 2022 rotation. That group remains full of other question marks, from Jacob deGrom, who is working his way back from a months-long elbow issue; to Noah Syndergaard and Marcus Stroman, who can be free agents; to a number of lesser arms that have done little to establish themselves as sure-fire options.
Carrasco, who is under team control for two more seasons, remains as important as just about any of them.
“I missed three months. Getting back to normal, it took me time,” Carrasco said. “There’s only five weeks left. Anything can happen. I don’t want the offseason to come yet.”