There was a time when being swept at home by the Braves was understandable.
This was not one of those times.
Instead, the Mets dropped three straight not to the class of the National League, but to the dregs. And they did so in ugly fashion, following a Keystone Kops-type loss Saturday with a virtual no-show in Sunday’s 6-0 defeat.
Afterward, Terry Collins said there could be some moves made before the Mets host the Royals on Tuesday.
“You don’t want to panic early, but right now — with what’s going on — we may shake some things up,” the manager said after his lineup got one base runner off right-hander Julio Teheran (3-7), who threw 120 pitches in the complete-game one-hitter.
Asked what ideas he had to change things, Collins declined to enlighten.
“I’ve got a lot of them [and] I’m not sharing one of them,” Collins said.
The solution, though, is pretty simple.
“We’ve got to get better,” Collins said. “We’ve got to start playing better, so we’ll see what we can do.”
The latest loss dropped the Mets to 36-32, the closest they’ve been to .500 in a month, since they were 22-18 on May 19.
A catatonic offense that awoke from its slumber against Pittsburgh earlier in this eight-game homestand has fallen apart again — and seemed to hit rock bottom Sunday.
Th Mets could only muster a leadoff single to center by Michael Conforto in the third. Teheran didn’t walk anyone, fanned seven and didn’t allow a base runner to reach scoring position.
“When you look at today and see one hit, and [us] not play very well, it looks bad,” Neil Walker said. “But … you have to remember, there’s another team on the field and there’s another guy out there who’s had some success. He kind of smelled blood in the water and came right after us.”
The lack of run support meant Jacob deGrom had almost no chance on the mound, but he wasn’t at his best, either. And he’s now gone since April 30 without picking up a win.
“I think that everybody is still believing,” deGrom said. “These guys still believe in here and I think we’ll be fine. It’s just one of those times. [It’s] part of baseball.”
DeGrom’s struggles began in the third, when he hit Erick Aybar to start the inning.
The Atlanta shortstop came into the series as one of the least productive players in baseball, but the Mets could barely keep him off the basepaths.
He scored on a single by Saturday’s base-running standout, Ender Inciarte, and Nick Markakis added another RBI single later in the inning. Markakis homered in the sixth, deGrom’s final inning.
By that point, though, the damage was done, because the Mets could hardly get on base — let alone score a run.
Antonio Bastardo and Hansel Robles came on to pour gasoline onto the fire, giving up three runs in three innings in what was a total team breakdown.
“We did not make the pitches we normally make and it came back to haunt us,” Collins said. “Our bullpen’s been absolutely great and all of a sudden now we can’t seem to get through an inning.’’
And don’t be fooled by the fact the Braves have now won five in a row. The first two came against a bad Reds team before Atlanta arrived in Queens.
Collins was left without much of an explanation.
“We came in here riding about as good a high as you could ride with the way we were swinging the bats,” Collins said of the two wins over the Pirates leading into the series. “And we got out-pitched and out-hit. That’s baseball.”
Or in this case, bad baseball.