How quickly Sandy goes from high-roller to bust

I’D LOVE TO TELL Sandy Alderson how to fix the Mets, who have crashed and burned in rather spectacular fashion in recent days, but the truth is the most sensible move he can make is sit on his hands and pray that his team doesn’t get completely buried before Memorial Day. Simply put, he has a major crisis on his hands with no obvious solution:

First, the Mets have no major league-ready pitchers of any real quality in the minors, which is why they resorted on Tuesday to signing Neil Ramirez, a reliever who has pitched for five organizations in the last two years — this only a week after signing Tommy Milone off the waiver wire for their starting rotation.

Secondly, a lack of prospect depth at the higher levels of the farm system makes it practically impossible to trade for significant pitching help.

Finally, it’s not as if there’s a silver lining for Alderson should the season go completely south and he decide to regroup for 2018. It’s not like Neil Walk- er, Lucas Duda, Curtis Granderson, or even Jay Bruce would bring back much value in trades as rental players headed for free agency.

All of which is why Alderson is really stuck in a position where he can’t do much but hope this isn’t the doomed season it appears to be at the moment.

The hope, of course, is that the Mets somehow stay within striking distance of a wild-card spot until they get their stars back from the disabled list, much as they did in August last season, sparking their run to the post-season.

But even last year they weren’t this decimated this early in the season.

“It’s a GM’s worst nightmare, dealing with so many injuries at this time of the season’’ was the way an executive from another team put it on Tuesday. “Teams aren’t in trade-mode yet, and the Mets have made a bunch of trades from their system the last couple of years, so as a GM you have to balance going for it versus making sure you’re ok going forward.”

Yes, the Mets have traded several minor-league pitchers the last couple of seasons in deals for the likes of Yoenis Cespedes, Tyler Clippard, Kelly Johnson (twice), and Fernando Salas, and while Michael Fulmer is the only one to make a name for himself at the major-league level, the others eroded the depth in the system.

Meanwhile, as I wrote Sunday, Alderson is expected to be protective of his top position-player prospects, not just Amed Rosario and Dominic Smith, but less-thanblue-chippers Brandon Nimmo and Gavin Cecchini as well, knowing he is likely to have several positions to fill next season.

So while you may recall Alderson being quoted early in spring training in Port St. Lucie saying, “We’re allin here’’ on the 2017 season, when asked if he’d have the freedom to add players at the trade deadline, the reality is Alderson didn’t think there’d be much of a need this year.

Depth was the big spring-training buzzword, remember, as it applied to both position players and pitchers alike.

Now “we’re all-in here’’ depends where the Mets are in another month or so: whether Cespedes has returned from injury in a big way; whether Matt Harvey has recovered any of his old form; whether Jacob deGrom gets back to pitching like an ace; whether Steven Matz and/ or Seth Lugo have returned by then to bolster the starting rotation and perhaps the bullpen as well.

It doesn’t look good, to be sure, and it has to be asked: could Alderson have done more to prevent this?

I don’t believe he had a choice as far as re-signing Bartolo Colon, not as long as Bruce’s $13 million was on the payroll, and it’s not as if Colon, with his 6.80 ERA so far for the Braves, would have been a savior.

The Mets could have beefed up the pen, to be sure, but finances were no doubt an issue there as well. And despite waiting deep into the off-season the Mets wound up re-signing Jerry Blevins and Fernando Salas, which at the time seemed to give the pen solid depth, especially since either Lugo or Robert Gsellman were expected to provide help there.

However, players get hurt more frequently than ever these days, and not just on the Mets. Look around the majors and several other teams have major injury problems as well.

Of course, it’s not just pitching injuries but performance that is killing the Mets.

Indeed, while Zack Wheeler’s strong outing on Monday did enough to get the Mets’ starting pitchers’ ERA out of dead-last in the majors, the meltdowns by Hansel Robles and the bullpen in recent days have now pushed the Mets’ overall ERA to 5.13, 30th among 30 teams.

You could see it coming for weeks, as the overuse of the pen was bound to take a toll at some point. The Jeurys Familia blood clot just seemed to be a breaking point, perhaps psychologically as much as anything. he result is a team in free-fall, with no reason to think things will improve significantly any time soon.

And, for Alderson, he’s stuck in a place where “we’re all-in” has taken on quite a different meaning at the moment.

T