SANDY SAYS SLIDE ALL HIS FAULT

ATLANTA — Blame the general manager for the Mets’ underwhelming play this season. That indictment came from none other than general manager Sandy Alderson himself Tuesday before the Mets’ 8-2 loss to the Braves, when asked to evaluate the front office’s role in the Mets’ brutal 28-35 start.

“We’re several games under .500 so the answer to that question has to be we’re not satisfied, and the work that we have done has not been successful,” Alderson said on a nearly 40minute conference call with reporters. “Going into the offseason we expected to rely on our pitching, and build a team and a lineup of position players that would be competitive on the offensive side and defensively as well. That hasn’t happened.

“Scoring runs at the anemic rate we have, something hasn’t worked, so from that standpoint I take full responsibility for where we are. I am not happy about it, but at the same time the job now is to figure out how to fix it and improve it.”

The Mets hit the reset button in a sense on Sunday, when veteran first baseman Adrian Gonzalez was released. Dominic Smith returned from Triple-A Las Vegas and will have an opportunity to show team officials he can be an everyday first baseman.

In a wide-ranging questionand-answer session, Alderson addressed numerous topics. In summary:

The time was right for Smith: Though the second-year first baseman had only a .713 OPS in 56 games this season for Las Vegas, Gonzalez had become a disappointment offensively and defensively for the Mets. At the very least, Smith should improve the team’s defense at the position.

“He’s not hitting the cover off the ball, he’s not hitting .325 like he was last year, but he’s playing very well around the bag,” Alderson said. “We want to see him. This might be a short-term proposition for Dom, it might be a longer-term proposition. But given this window, we are going to see some right-handed pitching, we just felt this was the appropriate time, particularly given how Adrian had sort of fallen off over the last two or three weeks.”

Jose Reyes still has a job be- cause the Mets don’t have a replacement for him: The veteran infielder has been among the worst players in baseball by just about any metric.

“In some sense this is an indictment of other personnel, we have to have somebody we want to replace him, that we think meets that threshold,” Alderson said.

“I am obviously aware, very cognizant of his history with the Mets. On the other hand, I can assure you that the decision on Jose or any other player is going to be on their merits.”

Now is the time for improvement, as Mets officials ponder whether the team should remain intact:

“We are focused on getting the team back to where it was many weeks ago,” Alderson said.