Justin Verlander good, but Framber Valdez better as Mets fall to Astros
Mets starting pitcher Justin Verlander walks back to the mound after giving up an RBI single to Houston Astros' Jose Altuve during the seventh inning of a baseball game Tuesday, June 20, 2023, in Houston. Credit: AP/David J. Phillip
HOUSTON — On so many nights during this mediocre season, after the Mets have gotten shut out or at least shut down, they have turned to a familiar refrain, a verbal crutch that sounds good enough when they don’t actually have any answers for what went wrong.
One must tip his cap to the pitcher. When the pitcher executes and doesn’t make mistakes, it is difficult for hitters to do anything. That guy is getting paid too.
On Tuesday, in a 4-2 loss to the Astros, all of the above was intensely true. Lefthander Framber Valdez, Houston’s in-house ace replacement for Justin Verlander, outdueled his predecessor with a gem: eight innings, two runs, four hits, one walk, nine strikeouts. The Mets didn’t put anybody on base until the sixth.
Verlander, facing the Astros for the first time since leaving them to sign with the Mets in December, was just OK. He lasted seven innings and yielded four runs and eight hits, striking out five and walking none.
Some days, that is good enough. Against Valdez, who finished fifth in AL Cy Young Award voting last year and appears poised to be a candidate this year, it was not.
“He’s got four above-average pitches. And it’s really difficult to recognize spin off of him,” manager Buck Showalter explained. “That’s why you see some good hitters swinging at pitches that your first thought is, ‘why are they swinging at that pitch.’?
“But the spin is so tight on it that it’s a lot of late recognition of the pitch. You don’t have that much time [to react].”
Said Jeff McNeil: “He throws it down the middle and lets the sinker go up and in and the slider go down and away. As a hitter, that’s tough. You see it down the middle and you got to choose one or the other — yeah, it’s tough. He pitched well.”
The Mets (34-39) will wake up on Wednesday, the first day of summer, 13 games back in the NL East — their largest division deficit on this date since 2003.
Valdez (2.27 ERA) took a perfect-game bid into the sixth, when with one out Mark Canha singled on a line drive looped to rightfield. But the next batter, Eduardo Escobar, grounded into an inning-ending double play, keeping Valdez’s batters-faced total at the minimum.
Tommy Pham (single) and Francisco Alvarez (double) reached base to open the eighth and later scored. But Brandon Nimmo, representing the potential tying run, popped out to end the frame.
“I thought we were going to get something going there,” McNeil said of the late-innings relative success.
Verlander’s line would have looked better if not for a three-run blip in the third. Corey Julks led off with a double down the rightfield line, advanced to third on Martin Maldonado’s single past a diving Francisco Lindor and scored easily on Jose Altuve’s sacrifice fly to center to put the Astros (40-34) ahead.
Then Alex Bregman came through with the big blow, a two-run home run. Verlander gave him a middle-middle fastball and he pulled it over the leftfield wall.
Bregman’s 150th career long ball was his first in a 3-and-0 count. “I know Breggy does his homework,” Verlander said. “He sold out for a heater there. That’s on me. I should’ve known a little better. I was trying to limit the damage on a big inning there by not walking him. Gave in, unfortunately.”
Verlander “didn’t love” facing his former teammates, he said. The Minute Maid Park sound system blared Eminem’s “Till I Collapse,” long his entrance music, as he took the mound in the bottom of the first.
“So freshly removed from knowing all those guys so well, you try to turn that part of you off and just focus on pitching and attacking those guys,” he said. “They came out on top. It would’ve felt great if we would’ve won, but this is competition. They feel great about it. I don’t.”
Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
