Mets’ latest troubling trend is making matters worse for floundering offense

LOS ANGELES — With a chance to snap their losing streak and break through on offense in a critical spot on Tuesday night, the Mets produced three of their worst at-bats of the entire season to date.

Jorge Polanco, Bo Bichette and Francisco Alvarez struck out in order against Dodgers left-hander Alex Vesia in the top of the ninth, the final three outs of a 2-1 loss for the Mets, their seventh in a row.

It wasn’t the fact that they punched out.

It was the swing decisions.

Vesia needed only 10 pitches in that inning to strike out the side. Of those 10 pitches, only one of them was in the strike zone.

Polanco took a called strike to begin the frame and then those three hitters — the meat of the Mets’ order — chased eight pitches out of the zone. They swung and missed at seven of them.

“Ultra aggressive,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said after the loss. “We just went out of the strike zone. We chased. It’s hard to score in situations like that. You really have to force those guys to come in the strike zone. Right now, we’re not doing that, especially at the end of the game.”

The Mets have shown flashes of pressing at the plate during this miserable stretch on offense, but this was as bad as it’s been.

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Vesia, who has a track record of walking hitters, didn’t have his good command on Tuesday night. Rather than being patient to get into hitter’s counts and get Vesia on the ropes with runners on, the Mets helped the reliever out, expanding the zone and abandoning their approach to try and tie the game with one swing.

It’s a testament to the way this club has been swinging the bat of late.

Since the eighth inning of Saturday’s loss to the Athletics, a span of 29 innings on offense, the Mets have scored one run on 11 hits.

Yes, Francisco Lindor snapped the Mets’ 20-inning scoreless streak with his leadoff home run off Yoshinobu Yamamoto in the first on Tuesday, but the Mets promptly started up a new scoring drought, wasting away a spectacular outing from Nolan McLean. Even when the Mets gathered some momentum against Yamamoto in the seventh and eighth innings, putting two runners on base with two outs, they came up empty.

Brett Baty’s at-bat against Yamamoto in the seventh, stranding runners on first and secon with a four-pitch strikeout, was another eyesore.

Luis Robert Jr. struck out looking against reliever Blake Treinen in the eighth after the Mets chased Yamamoto with back-to-back two-out singles.

Those were the Mets’ only two at-bats with runners in scoring position all night.

Over the course of their seven-game losing streak, the Mets have averaged 1.43 runs per game (10 overall) and just under six hits per game. They will enter play on Wednesday with one of the worst lineups in the league in most major offensive statistics.

So, how can the Mets stop pressing moving forward, even as they continue to flounder offensively?

“You gotta go back to your fundamentals,” Mendoza said. “You gotta go back to what got you to this level, understanding that you are a great hitter, and you can just let it spiral. I know it’s tough right now, but the last thing you could do is just panic or try to do too much. There’s always a sense of urgency, obviously, and they’re working, but you just gotta keep going.”

Lindor called Wednesday’s series finale against Los Angeles a “must-win” game, highlighting the Mets’ sense of urgency behind the scenes.

Once again, it’ll be up to the offense to break free from this ongoing rut. It doesn’t make it any easier that superstar Shohei Ohtani is on the mound for the Dodgers.

“It’s human nature,” Lindor said about pressing, “but in baseball, you get an opportunity the next day. So you gotta learn from it. You gotta find a way to turn the page as quick as you can and come back tomorrow.

“[On Wednesday] we face Ohtani. You can’t just sit here and then dwell on it for a very long time. We gotta come back tomorrow and face another ace. That’s it. Bottom line is, when you win, short-term memory. When you lose, short-term memory as well.”

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