BLUNDER ROAD
Amazin’s hellish trip ends with seventh straight loss
D’BACKS 5 METS 4
PHOENIX — Valley of the Sun or Valley of the Done?
The Mets dragged their bruised and battered backsides to the team charter Wednesday night grateful for the momentum they would receive a day later — from not playing.
“I think we’re ready for an off day,” Matt Harvey said after the Mets’ 5-4 loss in 11 innings to the Diamondbacks that extended his team’s losing streak to seven games, completing a winless road trip.
An already dreadful trip went full-throttle disaster as Chris Herrmann was clearing the fence in deep center field against Rafael Montero in the 11th inning. Operation Desert Mourn was complete, leaving the Mets seven games below .500 and threatening to become irrelevant by Memorial Day.
Blame a tattered starting rotation or untrustworthy bullpen, but the Mets have reverted to pre-2015 form, when the idea of contending for a playoff berth seemed like an opium-induced dream.
“It’s very easy to unravel right now and I will not let that happen here,” manager Terry Collins said. “We are not going to do that. We are still going to stay together, play together, get on the same end of the rope, pull together and I will not let this team get down.
“We got back to .500 [previously] and we will do it again. We’ve got to get healthy a little bit, but losing can be as contagious as winning and we’re going to turn this around.”
Harvey pitched into the sixth inning, but was sloppy on a day the Mets received a respect- able bullpen performance before Montero’s ill-fated pitch. Offensively, the Mets stopped scoring after the fourth inning.
“It’s not just one thing,” Jose Reyes said. “There is a lot of stuff happening right now. At some point this has to turn around. Hopefully it is sooner rather than later.
“Last year everybody counted us out and we came back. It’s still not even two months into the season — we know we are going to turn this around.”
Matt Reynolds and Lucas Duda drew two-out walks in the 11th inning against Tom Wilhelmsen, but Reyes struck out, sending the tie game into Montero’s hands. Herrmann worked the count full before unloading to deep center.
Jerry Blevins and Addison Reed combined on three innings of scoreless relief after Yasmany Tomas’ RBI double had tied the game against Robert Gsellman.
Harvey had plenty of traffic on the bases, but managed to surrender only three earned runs over 5 ¹/3 innings on six hits and four walks. The runs allowed were Harvey’s fewest in four starts, dating to April 21 when he surrendered three runs over seven innings.
The Mets’ bats bailed out Harvey. In the fourth, Juan Lagares hit a solo homer to tie it before Reyes stroked an RBI double that followed a walk to Reynolds.
Moments after a fan screamed “Adriana” — a reference to Harvey’s reported breakup with the actress Adriana Lima — Jake Lamb swatted the next pitch into the left-field seats for a two-run homer that put the Mets in a 3-2 hole.
Harvey slogged through a first inning in which he threw 29 pitches and allowed three runners to reach base but allowed just one run. Rey Fuentes tripled leading off against Harvey and scored on Chris Owings’ RBI ground out.
Michael Conforto’s two-run homer in the first gave the Mets a fast start against Diamondbacks lefty Patrick Corbin. After Reyes doubled to lead off the game, Conforto cleared the left-field fence for his 10th homer, tying him for the team lead in that category with Jay Bruce.
“I am not going to put my head between my legs and feel sorry for myself,” Collins said. “We have got to look at some bright things. There were some bright things I saw in Matt Harvey today. If we take something out of this game it’s that Matt Harvey took a step forward, and he did. We’re going to start there.”