The NY Mets and Washington Nationals are playing live on the MLB Schedule on Thursday afternoon and the game from Nationals Park is an NL East division matchup and starts up at 12:35 pm ET and has Jacob deGrom going up against Jordan Zimmerman in the pitching duel and that could be a great one, as the New York youngster has been great this season.

The Mets have been up and down all season, but one constant has been the performance of deGrom and he now gets another chance to start for New York. With Matt Harvey on the sidelines, deGrom has taken over as ace of the staff and he has been fantastic of late, including in a game against the Seattle Mariners a couple weeks ago and he will now try to stifle the Nationals in a divisional matchup.

deGrom has a 2.77 Era this season and he is just getting better and better and he matches up with Zimmerman, who has also been strong this year. The Mets don't have much to play for now, but they are still alive in the wild card despite being back a bit and while it will take some amazing play to egt into it, a win here would help quite a bit. The Mets have loved deGrom and the way he has handled himself and he has the third lowest ERA coming rookie pitchers and he was also the rookie of the month in July and that came after he went deep against the Mariners. He also was fantastic in his last start against the Giants, dueling with Jake Peavy and taking a no hitter into the seventh inning of that game.

The Mets are trying to take two of three from the Nationals in this series and it comes after the team lost to Doug Fister, who is now 11-3 on the season. The Nats are 10 games over .500 and the Mets are about to start a series up with the Phillies and that has AJ Burnett and Bartolo Colon facing off as former Yankees players and that will be on the road in Philly.

The Mets are ranked in the bottom half of the league in offense in nearly all categories this season, but they have been fantastic pitching the ball and they are ranked in the top 10 in the important stats. The team is ranked 10^th in ERA and fifth in quality starts and they are also 10^th in BAA and deGrom is one of the main reasons why. The Nationals are looking like they will be division champs and they come in playing well and they are about to start a series with the braves on Friday on the road.

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