Mets' Max Scherzer attributes better slider command to 'simple' fix

It might be too late to matter for the Mets. Or it might be just in time for the trade deadline. We’ll see about that, but, in any case, the Max Scherzer of old showed up on Sunday at Citi Field and he dominated an explosive Los Angeles Dodgers lineup as if still in his Cy Young Award-winning prime.

Of course, seven scoreless innings almost weren’t enough for a win because, well, these are the 2023 Mets.

They don’t hit much and, since coming back from the All-Star break, almost not at all. Also they don’t exactly have a lockdown bullpen. Other than David Robertson, who probably could have made for a smoother day had Buck Showalter used him in the eighth and ninth innings rather than the ninth and 10th.

But I’ll get to that.

The bottom line is the Mets found a way to win a close game, 2-1 over the Dodgers in 10 innings, when Luis Guillorme doubled home the winning run after twice fouling off bunt attempts.

In doing so they ended their four-game losing streak, managed to avoid getting swept by the Dodgers, and at least showed some mental toughness in bouncing back from their embarrassing performance on Saturday night.

Does it mean much in the grand scheme of things? Probably not. The Mets are too deep into the season to think they’re going to be magically transformed somehow from a team that has played bad baseball in all phases of the game.

They teased their fans with that six-game winning streak before the All-Star break, but they also negated that with four straight losses, their offense in a comatose state since returning for the second half.

They scored three runs in 28 innings in this series and there is no sign that Pete Alonso, their slugger whom they desperately need to hit for power, is going to break out of his months-long slump.

He’s currently in a 1-for-22 rut, but that’s only a continuation of months of looking for his stroke. He’s hitting .137 in June and July, and he’s under .200 since late April.

But for the moment let’s move on because Scherzer pitched well enough to restart the conversation about whether he can still pitch at a high level and help the Mets, even after fans were sick and tired of watching him hang sliders, especially in relatively big games.

His bad starts can’t be dismissed, but he’s also pitched with dominance more than occasionally this season. Sunday was his ninth start out of 16 overall (not counting the sticky-stuff suspension start) in which he has allowed two or fewer runs.

Still, there’s no getting around how small Scherzer has come up in some big games. He’s given up 18 home runs, most of them on hanging sliders, and that’s where Sunday’s performance might be especially meaningful:

“I’ve lost a lot of sleep trying to figure out why I kept hanging those sliders,” Scherzer said at his locker afterward. “I really think this is it. When you find it, you find it.”

Even if it’s by accident.

Scherzer said he still wasn’t commanding his slider well in the early innings against the Dodgers Sunday, yet he was putting up zeroes because he was using his off-speed stuff very well, especially his changeup and his curveball.

Then in about the fourth inning he started getting the slider down in the zone, at the same time noticing that mud had begun to cake in his cleats, adding extra weight to his landing foot.

“I’m thinking, ‘could it really be this simple?’“ he said afterward. “I haven’t been able to figure it out for the life of me. I kept thinking I was executing sliders down, and in reality they’re hanging.

“So I cleaned out the mud in the cleats after the fourth, and I went out for the fifth really focusing on really driving my left foot in the ground, more so than usual, and I started getting the slider down in the zone.

“Just something that simple, that stupid. But that’s baseball. And I’m still going to hang a slider and give up a home run, but it’s the consistency of getting it down in the zone. I’m convinced I’ll have that now.”

If so, then maybe Scherzer can be dominant more often again. Or who knows, a couple of more starts like this and maybe some contender will decide he can help put them over the top to win a championship, in which case perhaps it would be worth it for the Mets to trade him.

More likely Scherzer isn’t going anywhere because it will be hard to get enough value back to make a trade worthwhile, especially if Steve Cohen has to eat big money on his contract.

In any case, even on a day when Scherzer was brilliant, the Mets nearly blew the win because newcomer Trevor Gott pitched in his first high-leverage situation, taking over in the eighth with a 1-0 lead, and quickly gave it up.

The Mets wound up escaping with the win because Brooks Raley bailed out Gott and then Robertson pitched two scoreless innings, the ninth and the 10th.

Which, naturally, raised the question of why Showalter didn’t just use Robertson for the eighth and ninth -- not the first time the manager’s use of his best reliever has been questioned this season.

Showalter essentially said he thought the eighth lined up well for Gott, while mentioning that Robertson “was under the weather” on Saturday and indicating he didn’t want to use him for two innings unless absolutely necessary.

“We’ve got a good thing with David,” he said. “We’re trying to keep it a good thing.”

Of course, you can argue that every win is absolutely necessary at the moment.

But on this day the Mets won anyway and Scherzer gave them reason to believe they’re not dead and buried just yet.

Not completely, anyway.