Mets swept by San Francisco, go 2-11 in 13 games vs. Giants, Dodgers

With the revitalized vestiges of their dynasty from last decade plus a bunch of key newcomers, the Giants further showed this week what the Mets’ play has suggested for months: They cannot keep up with the best of the best in the National League.

The Mets lost again, 3-2, on Thursday as the Giants swept the three-game series.

As has become their custom, the Mets failed to come through when it mattered most — true in the micro sense, with Jeff McNeil grounding out to leave the bases loaded in the eighth inning, and true in the macro sense, with their playoff odds become increasingly long.

The upside for the Mets (61-66) is that this marked the end of what Pete Alonso at the start called a "show-me stretch" of schedule. In 13 consecutive games against San Francisco and Los Angeles, the top teams in the National League, they went 2-11.

During those two weeks, the third-place Mets dropped from a half-game back in the NL East to a season-high 7 1⁄2 games behind first-place Atlanta.

That left them grasping at moral victories instead of celebrating real ones. Of the 11 losses, eight were by one or two runs.

"I honestly think we were right there with them," said Alonso, whose two-run home run in the sixth accounted for the Mets’ only runs. "We were always one pitch away or one swing away or one baserunning advancement away. There’s always just that one little thing in every single game."

Manager Luis Rojas said: "We kept a lot of games close. We didn’t come up with a big hit. Our opponents came up with the big hit when they had the situation . . . That happened in a lot of these games."

The game-deciding rally was an unlucky one in the top of the eighth against Seth Lugo, who allowed just his second run in more than five weeks. Mike Yastrzemski led off with a single against the defensive shift. Curt Casali was hit by a pitch, barely, talking plate umpire Adrian Johnson into a reality that replays showed to be true. Darin Ruf came through with another single against the shift, driving in Yastrzemski from second.

Rojas went to Aaron Loup, who after walking his first batter — and falling behind the second 3-and-0 — escaped a bases-loaded, none-out jam to keep the Mets within a run.

Carlos Carrasco contributed the best and longest of his half-dozen starts this year: seven innings, three hits, two runs. He struck out five and walked none. After the briefest of early troubles — Kris Bryant’s two-run homer in the first inning — he settled in to retire 20 of the next 21 batters, including his final 13.

"I’ve been working so hard to get to this point," said Carrasco, who missed more than half the season because of a torn hamstring. "This is the way that I want to be."

Carrasco has allowed 10 runs in the first inning this year. In all other innings, he has given up eight runs. "I’m trying to figure out what’s going on there," he said.

The Giants (83-44) countered with lefthander Alex Wood, who held the Mets to two runs and six hits in 5 1⁄3 innings. They broke through on Alonso’s tying blast, a 447-foot shot that went off the second-deck windows of a luxury area in the leftfield corner.

Alonso, riding a career-high 11-game hitting streak, has 29 home runs. That is second in the NL behind Fernando Tatis Jr. (35).

And so begins the final countdown of the season. The Mets have five weeks until their last series, three games at Atlanta during the first weekend of October. They’re hoping that isn’t the only October baseball they play.

"Anything can happen in those five weeks," Carrasco said.

Up next are 15 consecutive games against the eminently beatable Nationals and Marlins.

"This is not the point," Rojas said, "where we can feel sorry for ourselves."