It is up to the baseball gods to cleverly disguise the most significant game of the New York Mets’ career in Justin Verlander’s. 1,648.6 miles away from Citi Field, Verlander is scheduled to pitch for the Houston Astros against the Arizona Diamondbacks. A Mets win in Flushing and another Diamondbacks loss in Houston would put Verlander’s former club ahead of Arizona.

Vito Calise, the man who caught Grimace’s first pitch, deserves credit for sharing the plan presented by the universe with us on Sunday.

The biggest game of Justin Verlander’s Mets career takes place on Sunday

This wasn’t what Billy Eppler had planned all along. He didn’t sign Verlander and then trade him with the plan to place a double agent in the American League to defeat a National League baseball club that was virtually ahead of the Mets in the Wild Card standings 13+ months later. He was just a guy looking to fill out the roster and bolster the farm system.

Verlander has struggled this season, going 3-5 with a 4.52 ERA in 13 starts. They were the innings we cared about the most. Now at 71.2, 140 were needed to fulfill his $35 million contract for 2025. There aren’t nearly enough games left for Verlander to double his innings total. Fans weren’t shy about pointing out that and other reasons why Verlander should wear a Mets shirt under his Astros jersey on Sunday.

Not everyone is convinced that Verlander will fulfill the task.

The Diamondbacks are bound to win more games, while the Mets are destined to lose some — although the latter seems more impossible with each passing day. Nine wins in a row? At this stage of the season? If you don’t feel some sense of optimism, you’ve been a Mets fan for too long.

As Alyssa Rose, daughter of Howie, the first of her name, suggests, we are either in a fairy tale or in the final act of a horror movie where we think all the villains have disappeared.

If the latter is the case, let’s hope that a certain Al Powell is there to save the day with one last shot.