Dominant deGrom points out his flaws

After yet another performance that garnered nothing but praise, Jacob deGrom stood at his locker and couldn’t help but mention an imperfection.

His mechanics, deGrom said, felt off during the middle innings. When that happens, he said, he yanks his fastball and floats his changeup.

“That’s where I kinda struggled a little bit,” deGrom said. “But other than that, everything felt pretty good.”

During the fourth, fifth and sixth innings against the Rays on Friday night, deGrom gave up a run on two hits. Nobody’s perfect.

That run was the only one he gave up. Those two hits made up half of his total on the night. He struck out eight. He dealt and the Rays folded in the Mets’ 5-1 win at Citi Field.

There was only one blemish on the night for baseball’s ERA leader — a fifth-inning fastball that Willy Adames sent out of the ballpark. Even that, deGrom said, wasn’t a mistake. Adames simply hit the best he had to offer. After ending the fifth, deGrom didn’t give up another hit. He gave the Mets a chance to win.

“We need to win games when Jacob deGrom pitches for us to be the team we wanna be,” manager Mickey Callaway said. “If we had been winning those all along, winning a few of [Zack] Wheeler’s when he’s been really good, we’d be where we wanna be. ... Those are the games you have to win when your pitchers are out there pitching deep into games.”

Still, the Mets nearly ended up losing this one, too. The Rays loaded the bases with one out in the ninth before Jeurys Familia got a fielder’s choice out of Mallex Smith and struck out Adames. It would have been easy for deGrom to fall into fatalism — after all, a loss would have been a redux of what has happened to him all year — but he didn’t.

“Honestly, I didn’t think about [losing],” deGrom said. “Thought Familia was gonna be able to get out of it.”

DeGrom has been doing this once every five days for five years now. Of the pitchers that seemed to make up the franchise’s future in 2015, deGrom is the only one to have lived up to his potential, the one guy that can be counted on.

Whether there will be a sixth year in New York, nobody knows. Interim general manager John Ricco left that door open before the game. DeGrom is 30, the Mets are 35-49 with no immediate path to contention. By the time one opens up, he may be well past his prime.

But as much as nights like these cement deGrom’s trade value, they also serve as a reminder just how nice it is to have a player like him.