Nolan McLean gets the ball for the New York Mets against the New York Yankees in the Subway Series on September 12, and that alone makes this game worth watching. The 25-year-old right-hander has been one of the few bright spots in a Mets season that has gone off the rails, while Carlos Rodon starts for the Yankees on the other side.
McLean enters at 11-8 with a 3.06 ERA and a 1.14 WHIP, and his 179 strikeouts rank 14th in baseball. Rob Friedman has gone further, saying McLean has the filthiest offspeed pitches in Major League Baseball, a nod to the kind of secondary stuff that has helped him miss bats all season. He has also handled the Yankees well in a tiny sample, with two hitters from that lineup going a combined 0-for-6 against him.
The timing matters because the Yankees are still chasing the top of the American League with 16 games remaining and sit three games behind the Tampa Bay Rays. Aaron Judge is back in the lineup after missing time, and he has played two games since returning, going 2-for-4 in his last one. That gives New York a different look at the plate, but it also raises the pressure on Rodon to hold serve while the club tries to close the gap.
Rodon has been steady enough to give the Yankees a chance. He is 5-3 with a 3.09 ERA and a 1.17 WHIP, and since coming back in August he has allowed five earned runs over 17.2 innings. He also has one previous outing against the Mets, when he gave up two earned runs over 3.2 innings and took the loss.
That is the sharp edge of this game: one young starter trying to keep a lost Mets season from swallowing the last good story they have, and one veteran trying to keep the Yankees on track while the standings tighten. McLean has already shown enough to matter, and if he can go deeper than Rodon in this Subway Series game, the Mets may leave with more than just another reminder of how uneven their year has been.
