The Mets have received great pitching from eight hurlers in the second half

We’ve all been focusing on how the offense has been struggling here recently that we’ve lost sight of how well the pitching has been performing. In the month of August alone, the Mets held their opponents to three runs or fewer 16 times, which allowed the club to go 19-11 in the month, despite the hitting woes and the tough schedule.

The thing is, the pitching has been doing great for longer than August. In the second half of the season, the Mets as a team have a 3.35 ERA, despite the efforts of Taijuan Walker (6.10), Joely Rodriguez (6.35) and Mychal Givens (8.03) in a combined 54.2 IP.

Of their top 10 pitchers in innings, eight of them have an ERA of 2.63 or less, including five with ERAs under 2.00, and another with an ERA of 3.12 – which is pretty solid for anyone and outstanding for your ninth-best pitcher. We already noted Walker’s ERA but let’s list the other nine, along with their IP and ER:

3.12 – David Peterson, 17.1 IP, 6 ER
2.63 – Carlos Carrasco, 27.1 IP, 8 ER
2.35 – Max Scherzer, 53.2 IP, 14 ER
2.33 – Chris Bassitt, 46.1 IP, 12 ER
1.98 – Jacob deGrom, 36.1 IP, 8 ER
1.65 – Seth Lugo, 16.1 IP, 3 ER
1.06 – Adam Ottavino, 17 IP, 2 ER
0.60 – Edwin Diaz, 15 IP, 1 ER
0.00 – Trevor Williams, 14 IP, 0 ER

Total – 243.1 IP, 54 ER for a 1.997 (2.00) ERA

A 2.00 ERA from nine of your top 10 pitchers is very exciting to see. Then you consider that 25 of the 38 games so far in the second half have come against teams with winning records, with 15 of those coming against teams in the top five in MLB in wins.

Pessimists will point out that the Mets are just 13-12 against winning teams here in the second half. But four of those losses were games started by Walker, who at this point seems unlikely to make a start in the playoffs. The Mets are 1-4 against winning teams in the second half in Walker starts. Take him out of the equation and the Mets are 12-8 against winning teams after the All-Star break. A .600 winning percentage in the playoffs will work quite nicely.

The question becomes: Are nine pitchers enough for the playoffs, especially with the uncertainty surrounding Peterson and Williams? The 2019 Nationals made the World Series using 10 pitchers in the NLDS and eight in the NLCS and the bottom few pitchers in both series threw minimal innings.

The other thing to consider is that Givens and Trevor May have another month to get straight, Drew Smith, Trevor Megill and Joey Lucchesi are still possibilities and the Mets will also have a SP – most likely Walker – bumped to the bullpen for the playoffs.

Of course, the Mets have questions about their offense. It’s very nice that the HR portion of the offense has shown up for the first two games in the Dodgers series. But the only non-HR run they’ve scored in the two games came courtesy of a bad decision and a worse throw by a Dodger pitcher. Maybe the Mets are saving all of their “luck” for the final Braves series. But the hitters need to do a better job of supporting the pitching moving forward.