Injury-riddled club sure doesn’t look Amazin’ yet

T HE Mets aren’t pretty right now. They’re banged up. The bullpen has been shaky. The lineup is punchless. When the starting pitching isn’t perfect, they’re an awfully hard team to watch right now, and these have been a couple of sobering games against the Nationals where they clearly look like the second-best team on the field.

Terry Collins put it perfectly as a raw Saturday afternoon became a frosty Saturday night.

“When you lose 3-1 and feel like you’ve been blown out,” the manager of the Mets said, “that’s not good.”

No. That’s not good. And the Mets, they aren’t very good right now. They have lost seven of eight, which is shocking mostly because when you throw a quality starter every game, the one thing that’s supposed to guard against is a long losing streak.

But those starters have fallen into a pattern of looking awfully good early in games before faltering just enough to allow a run or two, putting the Mets behind, putting pressure on an offense that right now barely has enough gas in the tank to make it across the street. It has been 11 days since a Mets starter won a ballgame. That wasn’t part of the plan.

But, then, neither was their annual affliction with offensive anemia. If this looks familiar it should. A year ago they had a 1-7 stretch, too, that was exactly as this has been: passable pitching, palpably terrible hitting. Two years ago it was an 0-7 stretch that was the same thing: here’s your run, kid. Make it hold up.

That’s no way make it through life, or a 162-game baseball schedule.

Of course, in both 2015 and 2016, those lulls happened later in the year so the numbers didn’t seem so stark. Same as nobody likes to see a .150 average or a 17.50 ERA on the scoreboard in April, nobody likes to see an 8-10 record in April, either, especially wen 16 of those 18 games have come against teams that ended last season south of .500.

“There’ll be a lot of winning baseball played here,” Jay Bruce insisted. “It’s easy to get caught up in it being April. Nobody in here is panicking.”

It’s worth noting the Mets shrugged off the malaise that affected them two years ago, and the one that nearly swallowed them whole last year, and when their lineup was healthy in making back-to-back stretch runs they scored plenty of runs. When they get Yoenis Cespedes back, and Wilmer Flores back, and Lucas Duda, and Travis d’Arnaud, they should more closely resemble the team they were supposed to be. Emphasis on the “should.” But, then, they probably should have been able to build on the 7-3 start that began the season. They should have been able to parlay that extra-inning marathon win at Miami into something better than what’s followed, this 1-7 skid that doesn’t promise to get any better anytime soon, not with Max Scherzer awaiting them in prime time Sunday night.

They should have done better than endure a staggering 0-for-34 skid against left-handers that spanned four games and didn’t end until Juan Lagares broke up Gio Gonzalez’s bid for a no-hitter in the sixth inning Saturday afternoon. That’s the problem with baseball, of course. No matter how meticulous your best-laid plans may be, you still have to score some runs once in a while.

“Right now,” Collins said, “we’re not finding many holes.”

The compound effect is the starters, already shouldering an enormous burden, feel compelled to be perfect. Jacob deGrom looked lights-out for three innings, he set a career record with 27 swings and misses and he struck out 10 hitters in 5 2/3 innings, but he also allowed six walks, he also surrendered three runs in the fourth and fifth innings. And Collins was right: it was only 3-0 at the time. But it felt like 30-0.

“My job is to put zeroes up,” deGrom said, “and I didn’t do that.”

Still, every now and again a starting pitcher is supposed to be allowed to give up a couple of runs and still have a chance to win the game. Not the Mets. Not lately. It’s April, and there’s too much talent in the room to believe this can last forever. Alittle proof of that might be useful, however. Sooner rather than later.