METS LUCKY NATS AREN’T TOO PESKY

Maintain lead while Washington struggles

to the Pirates, the Mets hold a 4½-game lead after the Nationals were pounded by the Giants, 12-6.

Washington is 1-5 on its current road trip, but perhaps more significantly, the division favorites are just 10-19 since the AllStar break, so it’s not as if this is merely a West Coast problem.

And it keeps getting worse for the Nats. A lack of offense has been their biggest problem of late, which they attributed to some of their key players returning from injuries recently.

But after the Nats scored but one run in three games against the Dodgers and Giants, their ace, Max Scherzer, took a pounding from the Giants on Friday, giving up seven runs in three innings.

And while Scherzer had been as good as advertised the first half of the season, he has a 5.05 ERA over his last five starts, while giving up 11 home runs.

Meanwhile, Nationals players have continued to tell the world they’re fine, don’t worry, they’re still the team to beat in the NL East, as Jayson Werth said recently.

Does there come a point when the combination of high expectations and months of underachieving become too much for a team to overcome?

Mets players aren’t about to say something that might awaken the Nats, but privately they have to be loving watching Washington struggle. It was way back in spring training, remember, when Zack Wheeler made it clear that the Mets felt they had something to prove to the Nationals. “I guarantee you we all saw what Bryce Harper said,” Wheeler told me with a smile at the time.

When they signed Scherzer? The Mets’ righthander nodded.

“He said, ‘give me my ring,’ ” Wheeler continued. “We’re going to make it hard for him to get that ring, I’ll guarantee you that.”

Actually, Harper said, “Where’s my ring?” But the meaning was essentially the same. He believed that adding Scherzer to an already-dominant starting rotation all but guaranteed the Nationals would win it all this season. And they still might. At some point, though, perhaps the underachieving takes on a life of its own.

On Saturday Collins said he still believes the Nationals will get hot in the coming weeks, in part because players such as Werth, Anthony Rendon and Ryan Zimmerman are still finding their rhythm at the plate after returning from injuries a couple of weeks ago.

With that in mind, the Mets manager said he doesn’t allow himself to think about winning the NL East and playing in October yet. “We’ve got a long way to go,” he said. “I’ve learned you can’t look too far forward.”

It’s the right thing to say, of course. And the Nationals very well still could get hot, as they did last year around this time when they won 10 straight games and 12 of 13 from Aug. 12-24 to pull away in the division. It’s worth noting, though: They were already 10 games over .500 when that streak began, with a five-game lead in the division. After Saturday they were .500 and looking up in the standings.

After another loss to the Pirates, the Mets have to hope that this late in the season, the Nationals are what their record say they are.