This Subway Series had the Max factor

If we created an elite division in baseball right now, it would include these five teams, carrying these records after Wednesday’s games:

Dodgers: 65-32 (.670 winning percentage)
Yankees: 66-33 (.667)
Astros: 64-35 (.646)
Mets: 61-37 (.622)
Braves: 59-41 (.590)

But of what we just saw in two Subway Series games at Citi Field, it is fair to say that there is no better team right now than Buck Showalter’s Mets. And knowing that Jacob deGrom is supposed to be returning as early as next week, they are about to get better.

One more thing: Of what we saw in Wednesday night’s game between the Mets and the Yankees, there is still no better big-game pitcher in the sport than Max Scherzer.

Scherzer didn’t get a decision on Wednesday night, because David Peterson came out of the bullpen and gave up a two-run homer to Gleyber Torres to tie the game at 2, before Starling Marte’s single walked it off for the Mets in the ninth. But Scherzer, pitching on his 38th birthday, was paid an awful lot of money by Mets owner Steve Cohen to pitch games exactly like this, July feeling and sounding like October on a night when the two teams played in front of the 10th biggest crowd in Citi Field history.

Here is the way Showalter put it, quite simply, when it was over and the Mets were on their way to Miami:

“Max. Thirty-eight. Wow.”

That is all he needed to say. At the age of 38, after all the years pitching in Detroit and Washington and Los Angeles and now New York, Scherzer still provides the wow factor, never more than when the lights are turned up, and they sure were turned up over the past couple of nights. Before he left the game, Scherzer even got Aaron Judge out three times, no small thing with the big man.

“I’m not going to sit here and act like I’m better than [Judge],” Scherzer said after the game. “He can definitely take me deep. I also believe I have the stuff to get him out.”

The last time was in the top of the seventh, Scherzer’s 99th and last pitch of the night, the Mets still leading, 2-0, runners on first and third, two out. Scherzer threw a pitch that tried to break all the way into the Mets’ dugout and Judge swung and missed, and Scherzer was next seen charging up that dugout and high-fiving everybody in sight.

It wasn’t just Scherzer on this night for the Mets, not by a long shot. Marte’s hit won the game and Seth Lugo was great out of the bullpen, picking up Peterson and getting the Mets to the bottom of the ninth. Pete Alonso hit another homer. But Scherzer was the star of it, as he continues to remind everybody why he has been one of the great pitchers of his time, as great as his old teammate Justin Verlander (now that he is healthy again) or Clayton Kershaw or anybody else you want to throw into the conversation about big guys like this.

Put it another way: Nobody is more The Guy than Scherzer is, even at 38.

He came back from an oblique injury suffered in May on July 5 against the Reds. He’s pitched 32 1/3 innings since then, and never allowed more than two runs in any of his starts, five earned runs in all. The world has been hitting .136 against him in this stretch. He has struck out 45 in those 32 1/3 innings. His ERA for the season now stands at 2.09. He pitched those seven innings against the Yankees on Wednesday, struck out six, gave up five hits, finally made Judge, who has been simply tremendous this season, look overmatched when it mattered most in the top of the seventh.

Of course a lot is going to change on the board, and that includes the Mets, in the days leading up to the Trade Deadline. The Yankees already made the first big move, getting Andrew Benintendi from the Royals. Juan Soto is still out there. So is the Reds’ young ace, Luis Castillo. The Mets are scheduled to get the guy who was supposed to be their primary setup man for Edwin Díaz, Trevor May, back within the next couple of weeks. And they are looking for more bullpen help than that.

And if there are no further setbacks for deGrom -- who has two Cy Young Awards to go with Scherzer’s three -- the Mets are hopeful that he is going to make his first start of the season against the Nationals next week, four months after the Opening Day start against the Nationals that he didn’t make.

For now the Mets continue to hold off the Braves. So the Mets have made that statement. They made another one to the Yankees the last two nights at Citi Field. The loudest of all, over the roar of the home crowd, was by Scherzer, the birthday boy. He’s been Showalter’s ace so far. Now he’s about to be joined at the top of the rotation by another ace. Wow.