Nearing hazy Deadline, Quintana dominates Nats

WASHINGTON -- For his first Fourth of July as an American citizen, Jose Quintana awoke at 7 a.m. -- about two hours earlier than usual -- and was at the ballpark in a jiff.

By lunchtime, his work for the day was complete. Quintana delivered seven speedy and efficient scoreless innings in a 1-0 loss to the Nationals, who won on a Jesse Winker pinch-hit homer off Adrian Houser in the eighth -- an unfortunate outcome for the Mets, but one that Quintana couldn’t have done much more to prevent.

The entire game lasted just one hour and 58 minutes. Combined with a special 11:05 a.m. holiday start at Nationals Park, the Mets were back in their clubhouse shortly after 1 p.m.

“I like quick games, but I don’t like that kind of quick game because you don’t get that support,” Quintana said. “I was waiting for our hitters. We need to make runs. When you score, the inning’s a little longer.”

Considering the effectiveness of New York’s offense over the past five weeks, it would have been difficult to chalk that up to more than a blip. For Quintana, however, the morning was the continuation of a renaissance. Over his past four starts, thanks in part to a mechanical tweak, Quintana is undefeated with a 1.16 ERA. His season ERA, which had risen as high as 5.29 on June 9, is back down to 4.22.

On Thursday, Quintana generated just seven swings and misses on 95 pitches, but he proved unpredictable to Nationals hitters, evenly sequencing five different pitches from his left-handed arm slot.

“I thought he was really, really good today,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said, crediting both Quintana’s unpredictability and his ability to jump ahead in counts.

All of it has painted Quintana as the picture of an attractive Trade Deadline candidate: a veteran who is rounding into form around midsummer, who has proven healthy and durable throughout his career, who plays for a below-.500 team and who has -- despite one notable hiccup way back in 2017 -- been effective during limited postseason exposure. Considering how many teams remain in reasonable contention given six playoff berths in each league, and how many clubs routinely need starting pitching at the Deadline, there’s little doubt the Mets could extract something for Quintana if they chose to put him up for sale.

It’s a rumor that has already begun rippling throughout the industry, but that represents a dangerous game of chicken. Right now, the Mets have seven big league-ready starters in their organization in Quintana, Luis Severino, Sean Manaea, David Peterson, Christian Scott, José Buttó and Tylor Megill. If and when Kodai Senga returns from the injured list in late July, he’ll make eight. But it wouldn’t take more than another muscle strain or two to throw the rotation into turmoil, which is why contending teams tend to stockpile starting pitching depth this time of year -- not get rid of it.

Much will depend upon the next three weeks. If the Mets play well enough against a weak schedule to stay in the race -- or, ideally, to rise above some other would-be NL contenders -- they will be hard-pressed to justify trading Quintana. If not, selling could begin to make sense. So could the middle-ground scenario of trading away a starting pitcher like Quintana while buying in other areas -- notably, the bullpen.

“I don’t think I’d rule out anything at this point,” president of baseball operations David Stearns said last week. “As we’ve just seen, a lot can transpire in a relatively short amount of time during the season.”

Quintana, for his part, has been through this before. As a member of the White Sox in 2017, he was traded across town to the Cubs weeks before the Deadline. Five years later, the Pirates dealt him to St. Louis, where he became a crucial part of the Cardinals’ stretch run.

Now, the Mets are caught in limbo with Quintana. They could trade him. They could keep him.

They still have a fair amount of time to decide.

“We’re in a really good race right now, so I think we need to focus on us,” Quintana said. “About trades, I’ve been in this position before. I just want to get ready every five days to compete, and let’s see what happens. But we’re doing good -- we’re doing better -- so if we can do better than better, that’s what we want.”