Framber Valdez gets a bear hug from his catcher Martin Maldonado after throwing a no-hitter at the Guardians Tuesday night.

What does it say that, on the day the Astros re-acquired the last man to throw a no-hitter in their silks, their struggling All-Star pitcher shakes off whatever it was prompting him to surrender fifteen earned runs over his past fifteen innings’ work to throw a no-hitter? The Astros may not be the only ones who’d like the answer.

But there it was. One minute, the Astros pulled the proverbial trigger on bringing future Hall of Famer Justin Verlander back. The next, after the trade deadline passed at 6 p.m. Eastern time Tuesday, Framber Valdez kept the Guardians hitless—with more than a little help from his friends—in a 2-0 win both of which Astro runs scored in the bottom of the third.

Verlander came home from the Mets in exchange for a pair of good-looking outfield prospects out of a farm system that was considered more than a little parched by any objective standard. Following their trade of fellow future Hall of Famer (and former Detroit rotation mate) Max Scherzer for a delicious Rangers prospect, the Mets actually looked smart in their unexpected circumstances.

“They did what they had to do, and I’m sure it wasn’t an easy call,” writes Smart Baseball author/Athletic analyst Keith Law, “but the Mets traded away six players from their big-league roster, including three pitchers all age 38 and up who either were heading for free agency or just unlikely to be that much help to the team in 2024 . . . ”

Dealing Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer—while paying enough of their salaries to return three solid prospects in Luisangel Acuña (No. 58 on my midseason top 60), Drew Gilbert (a first-round pick last year), and Ryan Clifford—are the kinds of moves more teams that have spent big only to fall short of contention should be making. And let’s give the Mets some credit for spreading the wealth around by sending one of those starters to Texas and the other to Houston.

I won’t pretend that that’s going to placate today’s generation of Met fans. You know. The generation that pronounces a season lost over one bad inning in early April. But Law is absolutely right. Especially with the coming off-season and, not merely to buy time, the pack of pitching free agents coming to within their glandular budget.

Particularly, a certain unicorn to whom the Angels held on for an (admittedly) outside postseason shot before he enters the market. The unicorn who’s both one of the best pitchers in the American League and a bona fide threat to Aaron Judge’s barely-year-old AL single-season home run record.

The Astros needed Verlander back more than anyone would have predicted when the season began. They’d just won a World Series and looked as though saying goodbye to a (controversial enough) era when they let the freshly-crowned Cy Young Award winner—the only baseball senior citizen ever to land one in his first year back from late-career Tommy John survery—walk into free agency.

But then they lost Lance McCullers, Jr., Luis Garcia, and José Urquidy to the injured list. Then, the Mets’s season went from World Series expectations to the landfill. Even as Verlander shook off early struggles and injury to round back into something resembling his old self (he has a 1.49 ERA over his last seven starts), it wasn’t enough to save this year’s Mets.

So the Mets elected to look 2023 reality in the eye and say time to start repairs. They dealt Scherzer to the Rangers after he delivered seven solid against his old team, the Nationals, en route the Mets taking three of four from the equally moribund Nats. When Scherzer asked the front office what the plan was, and learned it was moving on from deals expiring this year or next, he waived his no-trade clause and let the Mets move him onward.

The Astros are nipping at the Rangers in the AL West. The two teams square off themselves in a three-game set in early September. Tell me you won’t think it must-see television to see JV versus Max the Knife at least once in that set. Even if they’re not exactly young men anymore, they may yet have enough left in their tanks to have the eyes of all baseball upon them, especially with the AL West still at stake there.

It’s kind of a shame that Valdez picked Tuesday to pitch his jewel. Verlander back to Houston; St. Louis’s Jack Flaherty getting a fresh start in AL East-leading Baltimore (where he might get fixed enough to command a nice free agency pay day this coming winter);  the Cardinals otherwise reviving their own testy farm system without surrendering Nolan Arenado or Paul Goldschmidt.

Those were just too big to leave room. As were the Yankees even in inertia. They made no move other than landing middle relief pitcher Kenyan Middletown because they couldn’t realistically do a blessed thing. What they could move was either inconsistent or overpriced; what they could or might have brought in wouldn’t have been enough, even with Gerrit Cole at the head of the AL’s ERA pack and Judge back from his toe fracture.

You think today’s Met fan has the patience of a Nile crocodile? Don’t get me started on Yankee fans. From generation to generation, their credo is that a season lacking a postseason is illegitimate. For the generations since their last World Series win, the merest shortfall is enough to cause them to demand, “What would George do?”

The answer to that question is not what Yankee fan wants to hear anymore. They’d really rather have the late Boss’s tyranny and mutation back than what they have now. Never mind how it turned the 1980s Yankees into a basket case. Peace and quiet isn’t an option if the Yankees aren’t at the top of the AL East. Doesn’t it sound perverse to say a team with a winning record at this writing is also a basket case?

But there Valdez was, on the Minute Maid Park mound, striking seven out, letting his defenders take care of about 81 percent of the outs he needed otherwise, while Kyle Tucker took care of the game’s scoring with a two-run single in the bottom of the third.

Valdez stood at the top of the pitching heap Tuesday, and the trade deadline with all its attendant sidebars left him a hero without decoration. Even if Verlander’s first move on his arrival back with the Astros might be to congratulate him and welcome him to a unique club.

Sixteen no-hitters (four of which were combined, one of which was thrown by Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan) have been thrown by Colt .45s/Astros pitchers since their 1962 birth. From Don Nottebart (vs. the Phillies, 1963) through Valdez. That’s the most of any expansion franchise so far.

Valdez has a unique set of bragging rights while he’s at it. It took 61 years for an Astro  lefthander to do it. He can also say he’s the only man in baseball history, so far as anyone knows, to throw a no-hitter on deadline day, after the deadline hour passed but while the analysis and debates over the deals went hollering apace. The poor guy.