Mike Vasil slipped away from Mets and is quickly making most of White Sox chance

Join Post Sports+ for exciting subscriber-only features, including real-time texting with Mike Puma about the inside buzz on the Mets.Mike Vasil assumed he was going to once again be a Met.Informed a few days before the season began that he was not going to make the Rays roster, the Rule 5 draft pick packed up his stuff and drove to Port St.

Lucie.The vast majority of the time, when a Rule 5 selection cannot stick with a team that has taken a chance on him, that player is offered back to his original club.But he only gets offered back to the original club after a waiver period.

In a rarity, another team — the White Sox — put in a claim.On March 23, Vasil sat in the Mets’ backyard and watched the NCAA Tournament when he received a phone call from a Florida phone number that he assumed would entail the Rays officially telling him he had been returned to the Mets.Instead it was Tampa Bay president of baseball operations Erik Neander, who told him “to get on a plane to Chicago for Opening Day,” Vasil recalled from the visiting clubhouse Tuesday.“And I was like: Wow, this is pretty crazy.

… My head really just started spinning.”Vasil, a former top pitching prospect for the Mets, has proven elusive since becoming a former Met.Left unprotected in December’s draft, he was grabbed by the Phillies but then flipped to the Rays.

He allowed seven runs in 10 ²/₃ Grapefruit League innings with the Rays but showed enough that the White Sox believed they could find a role for the longtime starter in their bullpen.They might be right.Vasil entered play Tuesday with a 2.30 ERA in his first 16 major league games, essentially filling the same role that Max Kranick has carved out in Queens.

Vasil has pitched three innings in a game five times and been a nice piece for a team that can use any help it can get.This is not how the Mets had envisioned Vasil reaching the majors, but the Amazin’s had long envisioned he would reach the majors.Vasil was an eighth-...