Mets drop finale with Giants but finish trip 7-3

SAN FRANCISCO — Finally allowed to go home Sunday night — though their plane wasn’t scheduled to land in New York City until after sunrise Monday — the Mets did so with conflicting feelings.

They dropped another game to the Giants, 5-4, in the series finale, their first time losing consecutive games in more than two weeks. That was bad.

But they finished their three-city California road trip with a 7-3 record. That was very good.

“I don’t think anybody after a loss says, well, let’s do the math of it,” manager Buck Showalter said. “We came out here trying to win all of them. We’re not playing the math of it. It’s no given that you’re going to play [however well] at home. You have to earn everything at this level. A disappointing way to end it. But guys have been on the road for 17 out of the 23 games. It’ll be good to get in their own beds.”

Tylor Megill added: “We played good baseball. It’s hard to play on the road, and we were out here for a while . . . As much as it [stinks] today, guys had a really good road trip.”

The Mets are 14-9 — a 99-win pace over a full season — despite all that has gone wrong in this first month. At a point in the year when division standings are a curiosity more than anything meaningful, they are a half-game behind Atlanta, which will visit Citi Field for a four-game series beginning Friday.

“It definitely feels,” Megill said, “like we haven’t been home whatsoever.”

The game-deciding play came in the bottom of the eighth when Joc Pederson walked and Drew Smith allowed Mike Yastrzemski’s go-ahead double, a line drive into the right-centerfield gap. Brandon Nimmo cut it off and threw the ball in, but the relay throw was not nearly in time.

Showalter declined to use both of his top relievers, David Robertson and Adam Ottavino. Neither had pitched since Wednesday and neither will pitch on the off day Monday.

“That’s good. It’s a good thing for us,” Showalter said. “We’re trying to monitor and keep everybody physically fit.”

Ottavino and Robertson were available, Showalter said, but “the situation didn’t present itself today.” Ottavino probably would have pitched the bottom of the ninth if the Mets had gotten there. He went to Smith, the third-best option, for the eighth as part of his longer-term goal of not leaning too heavily on any reliever in particular. “We were comfortable with any of those guys pitching,” he said.

Megill was mediocre again, throwing his fewest innings (four) and allowing his most runs (four) out of his five outings this month.

After the Mets scored twice in the top of the fourth to take a 3-2 lead, the Giants answered with two runs in the bottom of the inning. Blake Sabol had an RBI single and a run scored when Francisco Lindor dropped the ball on the transfer while trying to complete what could have been an inning-ending double play.

“Your biggest thing is when they score runs is to get back out there and get that shutdown inning,” Megill said. “And you don’t put up a zero. That’s probably one of the biggest frustrating things, when guys are putting together good ABs and getting run support. Then you go back out and give up runs. It definitely stinks.”

Francisco Alvarez homered, his first extra-base hit in eight games this season, to tie it in the sixth. He is hitting. .148 with a .407 OPS as a part-time player.

“It was good to see something happen to him positively from an offensive standpoint,” Showalter said. “So maybe on the off day he can dwell on that a little bit and come in Tuesday and continue to get closer to what we know he’s capable of.”

By Tim Healey

timothy.healey@newsday.com@timbhealey

Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.