Mets' comeback clock is ticking as calendar moves toward June

Carlos Mendoza acknowledged reality.

And preached hope.

In the span of two sentences.

“It’s been hard for us,” Mendoza said a few hours prior to the Mets’ 6-1 win over the Marlins at Citi Field Saturday. “We’re not in a good position — not a secret — but we got a very good opportunity in front of us.”

The “opportunity” Mendoza mentioned was that the Mets, who have won three in a row and are now 25-33, have 104 games remaining in a span of 119 days, beginning with Sunday’s series finale. The manager believes that should give his team hope that it can begin making up ground.

But there is a lot of ground. Acres of it.

Because immediately after the win, the Mets still trailed National League East-leading Atlanta by 14 games and were 6 1⁄2 games out of a wild card spot. Only San Francisco (.386) and Colorado (.362) had a worse winning percentage than the Mets’ (.431) in the National League, and their record is 24th out of 30th in all of MLB.

All of which President of Baseball Operations David Stearns admitted during his pregame availability before his team’s 9-7, 10-inning win in the series opener Friday night.

“We have not had a good year so far,” was the way Stearns opened the media session. “There’s no question we were not where we thought we would be. We’ve dug ourselves a hole — it’s not an insurmountable hole — but it is definitely a hole and we’re going to have to play a lot better baseball to do what we want to do this year.”

But the overriding question is whether this team, as it is currently constructed, is capable of performing to the level Stearns and Mendoza believe they can on a sustainable basis.

Because all of the publicly available statistical analysis indicate that the Mets are a team that struggles to score runs, leaving little-to-no margin for error for the starters and bullpen.

According to data culled by Baseball-Reference.com, the Mets came into Saturday’s game scoring 4.25 runs per game at home against a 4.27 ERA. On the road, the Mets were averaging 3.58 runs, versus a 3.55 ERA. Moreover, they were hitting .232 at home with a .300 OBP and .357 slugging percentage, while having a .221/.284/.346 slash line on the road.

“We believe we have the talent to be a very good offensive team,” Stearns said. “We still believe that.”

Against the Marlins, Christian Scott (1-0) struck out eight in five innings to earn his first Major League win, and both Jared Young and Hayden Senger homered. For Senger, who caught Scott in the minors, the homer was his first in the Majors.

“It’s a hard game,” Mendoza said afterwards. “[Players] are going to struggle at times. If you continue to stay positive, you continue to trust your players that at some point they’re going to come through.”

But that presupposes that some of the key components are in the lineup.

And generating offense.

The top-of-the-lineup trio of Francisco Lindor, Bo Bichette, and Juan Soto have only played nine games together. Even though Bichette has been in the lineup for every game, Soto has missed 17 games — 15 with a strained right calf and two with flu-like symptoms — and Lindor hasn’t played since April 22 due to a strained left calf. Stearns said he does not have “an exact timeline” for when the shortstop can return.

Bichette, who went 0-for-3 Saturday, is hitting .222. Soto went 1-for-3 with a run and an RBI to raise his average to .300. Before he was injured, Lindor was hitting .226 with two home runs and five RBIs in 24 games.

“We did believe that the top of our order would match any top of order in baseball and we haven’t had those players together. When we’ve had elements of that group on the field, we haven’t gotten the production that we anticipated,” Stearns said. “We still believe those guys are really good players and when we get them back at the top of the lineup, we’ll have a really good top of the lineup.”

Perhaps the executive’s belief is well-founded. But it runs headlong into the actuality that the Mets have already played 58 of their 162 games (35.8% of the season).

As such, Stearns conceded that time is not an ally since Aug. 3 is the trade deadline, while saying variations of the phrase “we’re not there yet,” four separate times when asked about the possibility of subtracting players from the roster.

“I do still think it’s early to have very robust trade discussions,” Stearns said. “ . . . [But] at some point you get close enough to the deadline where you have to make a decision.”