This Week in Mets: Can this core deliver in the season’s biggest moments?

“His face was like the autumn sky, overcast one moment and bright the next.” —“Heart of Darkness,” Joseph Conrad Back in April, when Reed Garrett was firing zeroes and striking out the world, pitching coach Jeremy Hefner made a point I hadn’t heard made quite so explicitly: The Mets needed to ease the inexperienced Garrett into high-leverage innings. The pitching possibles at Toronto RHP Paul Blackburn v. RHP Chris Bassitt LHP David Peterson v. RHP Bowden Francis LHP Sean Manaea v. RHP Kevin Gausman at Philadelphia LHP Jose Quintana v. RHP Aaron Nola RHP Luis Severino v. RHP Seth Johnson RHP Paul Blackburn v. LHP Cristopher Sánchez Inside baseball Considered the team’s primary weakness entering the season, the Mets’ rotation has evolved into a strength, despite the considerable handicap of losing ace Kodai Senga for all but 5 1/3 innings. Even Hefner was unsure how long the Mets would continue to pitch quite this well, and if you’re thinking beyond this season, three-fifths of the current rotation is likely headed to free agency. Minor-league schedule Triple A: Syracuse at Worcester Double A: Binghamton at Portland Wild-card schedule San Diego: at Seattle2, at San Francisco3 Arizona: v. Texas2, v. Milwaukee3 Atlanta: v. Cincinnati1, at Washington2, v. Los Angeles Dodgers4 Last week in Mets A note on the epigraph So I get most of these epigraphs from a large Microsoft Word file I’ve had for nearly 20 years, filled with lines from books I like.