Mets turn to deGrom with backs against wall

NEW YORK -- Before winning two NL Cy Young Awards, before earning billing as the likely greatest pitcher of his moment in time, Jacob deGrom forged his first bits of legend during the 2015 postseason. In Game 1 of the National League Division Series against the heavily favored Dodgers, deGrom struck out 13 batters in one of the finest performances of his life. Six days later, despite lacking the same dynamism, deGrom beat the Dodgers again to key New York’s run to the pennant.

This version of deGrom is seven years older, far more decorated but also more fragile. He has not returned to the playoffs since. He has never pitched a postseason game at Citi Field.

When deGrom does so in Wild Card Series Game 2 on Saturday, the Mets will be desperate for him to rekindle whatever brilliance he first captured in 2015.

Without it, their season will end.

“This is what you want,” first baseman Pete Alonso said. “Jacob deGrom in the playoffs.”

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It was not until the middle innings of Friday's Game 1, a 7-1 Mets loss to the Padres, that deGrom knew with some certainty he would pitch Saturday. Hoping to sweep San Diego and line deGrom up for NLDS Game 1 in Los Angeles next week, manager Buck Showalter told him he would only start Game 2 if the Mets lost their playoff opener. When that happened, deGrom began paying keener attention to how the Padres were attacking Max Scherzer, who allowed seven runs on four homers. He looked at their swings and their reactions to certain pitches.

Shortly after the game, Showalter announced what he had already heavily implied: deGrom was going to pitch Game 2. The Mets were not going to let their season slip away without giving the headliner of their rotation a fair chance to save it.

“It’s a huge goal of mine to keep this thing going and pass it along to [Chris] Bassitt,” deGrom said.

There is perhaps no one in whom the Mets have more faith, despite the fact that deGrom will enter Game 2 at one of the most precarious junctions of his career. The past three seasons have seen him endure a litany of elbow, shoulder, forearm and back problems, including two major injuries that kept him sidelined for almost 13 full months from July 2021 to August 2022. When deGrom finally returned, the Mets eased him back in, slowly escalating his pitch counts, fearful of his health.

The plan appeared to be working until mid-September, when the first cracks appeared for deGrom. He allowed three runs in a game to the lowly Cubs, who swept the Mets as they began their descent from likely division champions to a Wild Card team. He allowed three more in his next start to the last-place Pirates, then five to another last-place club, the A’s -- deGrom’s worst start in more than three years. Finally, as the Mets endured a three-game sweep in Atlanta, deGrom allowed three more runs to the Braves, admitting afterward that he had been nursing a blood blister on his right middle finger.

The blister was one of the reasons why the Mets chose Scherzer instead of deGrom for the Game 1 assignment, though other factors were at play.

Regardless, deGrom now insists that his finger is a non-issue. The dead skin, he says, has all peeled away, and he’s no longer treating it.

It is a chance for deGrom to return to his old, dominant self, rather than the pitcher who owns a 6.00 ERA over his past four starts. Padres star Manny Machado called deGrom “a great” pitcher, which he’ll need to be if the Mets intend to play beyond Saturday.

The Mets suspect he will be something similar to what he was in 2015.

“That’s what we love doing, competing, and going out there in big situations,” deGrom said. “You’re going out there and you try to leave it all out on the field. You look at yourself in the mirror at the end of the day and know you gave 100 percent. That’s all you can do.”