Mets' David Peterson hit hard by Giants, club suffers third straight loss

SAN FRANCISCO — The Mets have a new buzzword for this season.

It’s called win prevention.

Try as they might, Carlos Mendoza & Co. just can’t get their act together in any consistent fashion, and on Thursday night, the pitching staff could be counted among the co-conspirators in a 7-2 loss to the Giants at Oracle Park.

Rest assured, the offense didn’t do much either, as the Mets ran their total output to 14 runs in the past six games. Bo Bichette collected his first extra-base hit as a Met (RBI double) and Mark Vientos smacked his first homer, but David Peterson couldn’t contain the Giants in his 4 1⁄3 innings. He allowed nine hits and six runs, one of which was unearned, thanks to his own error in the first inning.

The Mets did so little offensively that they were a mere 0-for-3 with runners in scoring position and are 1-for-32 in their last four games.

Overall, the Mets are hitting .155 (11-for-71) with runners in scoring position, which ranks 29th in the majors, ahead of only the Reds (.152). They lead MLB with 59 stranded runners.

Are they under a magnifying glass this early in the season?

“I think people are looking at everything, every day, throughout the whole season,” Bichette said. “Some years you get off to a good start, some years you don’t. Just part of it.”

Are they hitting in bad luck as a group? “Maybe, but that’s not something to fall back on,” Bichette said. “You should always be looking to do better, be better. So that’s what we’ll do. And good thing about baseball, you get to show up and do it again tomorrow.”

The Mets (3-4) have lost four of their last five games and are the only team in the NL East currently below .500. They’re 2 1⁄2 games behind the division-leading Marlins, who have MLB’s lowest payroll at $84 million.

The Mets’ rotation carried a 3.06 ERA into Thursday night’s game, the sixth-best in the majors and one of the few things keeping them afloat through the first week. But the Giants barreled up Peterson all night — their average exit velocity was 93.9 mph — and Sean Manaea continued to labor out of the bullpen (one run, four hits, 3 2⁄3 innings).

Peterson repeatedly was a pitch away from having the game blown wide open, but when he exited with the Mets in a 5-2 hole, Manaea let the Giants tack on a few insurance runs. Casey Schmitt added a two-out RBI single in the fifth and Rafael Devers led off the sixth with a 404-foot homer.

“They had a good plan and they executed it,” Carlos Mendoza said. “It looked like they forced him up in the zone and they were super-aggressive, especially early in counts, and they made solid contact there.”

Said Peterson: “I think early in the game, there were pitches that I was trying to get down in the zone and I left them up. And they were able to take advantage.”

There were a few ugly defensive moments as well. Peterson’s error led to an unearned run in the first inning when he fumbled a flip from Vientos on what should have been the third out. In the second, Marcus Semien — who has struggled in every way imaginable — ranged into shallow centerfield, only to botch Schmitt’s pop-up rather than just let the charging Luis Robert Jr. reel it in. The play was ruled a hit but should have been an out.

On Thursday night, the Mets added run prevention to their growing list of problems, and it was a system-wide failure early on. Despite renovating the team’s defense and upgrading the rotation, Stearns’ offseason mantra showed some cracks for really the first time.

The Mets actually took a 1-0 lead in the first inning on Bichette’s RBI double.

Peterson quickly gave up the lead in the bottom half as the Giants scored three runs, all with two outs. Luis Arraez knocked in the first by smacking a triple high off the brick archway in rightfield and Matt Chapman followed with an RBI double. Just when it looked as if Vientos would save him from further damage with a nifty diving stop of Jung Hoo Lee’s grounder, Peterson fumbled his toss en route to the bag, allowing Chapman to score from second.

Vientos led off the second with a 406-foot shot over the leftfield wall. Perhaps venting some of his team’s recent frustration, Vientos let loose with a monster bat flip as he passed in front of the Mets’ dugout.

 Bichette came within a few inches of a tying homer in the third but was robbed by former Met Harrison Bader, who reached above the centerfield wall to snatch his 390-foot rainbow.

Disaster soon followed in the bottom half as the Giants opened with three straight singles, including a 30-foot roller by Chapman. Lee and Bader hit back-to-back sacrifice flies to put the Giants up 5-2, but Peterson kept the game from getting completely out of hand by striking out Willy Adames with the bases loaded.

Schmitt’s two-out RBI single off Manaea produced another run charged to Peterson.

To add insult to injury, Blade Tidwell — the former Mets prospect traded for reliever Tyler Rogers last July in the deadline deal — pitched three scoreless innings for the save in his Giants debut. Tidwell allowed two hits and struck out two, including Vientos for the final out.

By David Lennon

dave.lennon@newsday.comDPLennon

David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.