After GM says help not coming, deGrom shuts down Angels

Sandy Alderson revealed earlier Friday that he has heeded the call to become more hands-on with the Mets’ ongoing and oft-mishandled injury situation. That overdue declaration still couldn’t have had anyone feeling any better a few hours later when last-ace standing Jacob deGrom was visited on the mound by trainer Ray Ramirez and manager Terry Collins for a callus on his right ring finger in the seventh inning of what had been a desperately needed scoreless pitching performance. Déjà vu all over again? Not this time, Yogi. DeGrom proceeded to load the bases, only to escape the inning without a run scoring, fronting the Mets to an exhaling 3-0 home win over Mike Trout and the Angels to help halt his undermanned and underperforming team’s latest ugly losing streak at seven games.

“That’s certainly exactly what you thought we’d be able to do, get our starting pitchers to really carry us,” Collins said. “Unbelievable what Jake did in the seventh inning … We needed a win bad.”

It was clearly an uplifting conclusion to a day that began with Alderson understating that his team is “obviously not where we’d like to be.”

Alderson and Collins have no choice but to go allin with this talking point of leaning on the Mets’ recent history of overcoming months of listing performances in each of the past two regular seasons before reaching the World Series in 2015 and then earning a wild-card berth last year.

Even if there is no guarantee that the season won’t still continue unraveling from here.

Their best starting pitcher, their closer, their top slugger and too many others to list remain in various stages of injury rehabilitation, but this is the story they are pushing and they are sticking with it.

There doesn’t appear to be much of a Plan-B. Not at the moment, anyway. “I just sat with them (Wednesday in Arizona) to make sure everybody understands we’re going to be OK,” offered Collins, who tied Davey Johnson for the most games managed (1,012) in team history. “Let’s not get down, which they’re not. They’re a veteran team and they’ll fight back. They have in the past and they’ll do it again.”

Admittedly, it was hard to imagine Collins ever reaching this games-managed milestone when he was named Mets skipper in 2011, a dozen years after a dysfunctional clubhouse forced the “mutual decision” for him to resign mid-season in Anaheim in 1999.

Collins has recounted often, including to Daily News beat writer Kristie Ackert earlier this week, the alterations he made to his personality and to his managerial style since that humbling experience with the Angels.

That approach mostly has served him well, even while fans were clamoring for his head in both 2015 and 2016.

“We weren’t seven games below .500, but in August we were two games below .500 last year and played pretty stinkin’ good,” Collins said. “So we’ve got a long way to go.”

With Yoenis Cespedes potentially due back next week, Alderson reiterated another newsworthy statement, that fans still shouldn’t expect the organization’s top two position prospects – shortstop Amed Rosario or first baseman Dominic Smith — to be summoned as immediate reinforcements from Triple-A.

Super-2 arbitration considerations be damned, that is a debatable stance with which I strongly disagree. But at least Alderson has been able to maintain his sense of humor amid the chaos.

“We’re very happy with where they are. There are no current plans to promote either of them — unless one of them can pitch, in which case we might reconsider,” Alderson cracked. Indeed, more than anything, the Mets desperately needed a strongly pitched game out of deGrom to spare Collins’ overtaxed bullpen. They perhaps received even more than that when the floppy-haired righty somehow completed his seventh shutout frame.

His escape job with the bases full began with a strikeout of Danny Espinosa (deGrom’s ninth of the game) and also featured a juggling over-the-shoulder catch in short left by shortstop Jose Reyes and a lazy fly ball corralled by Jay Bruce in right, which prompted deGrom to pound his hand into his glove as he left the mound.

Yes, it certainly felt like an important moment in a season mostly devoid of them.

“I actually wanted to go farther than that,” deGrom said. “I wanted to stay out there as long as possible tonight.”

Especially with Matt Harvey still unable to provide something similar in his first two starts following his AWOL suspension nearly two weeks ago, and with Noah Syndergaard expected out until deep into the summer with a torn lat following his refusal to heed the medical staff’s advice to get an MRI on his upper arm. o that end, Alderson did allow earlier Friday that the organization has started instituting “practical changes” — mostly, him directly meeting on a daily basis with the training staff to improve the chain of information — to an injury protocol that continues to draw criticism from the top down, beginning with micromanaging co-owner Jeff Wilpon.

“I don’t think there’s any question that the injuries have had an impact,” Alderson said. “But I think if you look at the team that we put on the field, in the absence of those players injured, that we would’ve expected in the aggregate more from the team than we’ve gotten. So I don’t subscribe to the notion that the injuries have put us where we are.”

The seventh-inning medical visit to the mound had to provide a here-we-go-again feel throughout what Alderson once described as Panic Citi. Only, not this time, as deGrom made sure of that.

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