Mets' comeback clock ticking as calendar approaches 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 before the Mets’ 6-1 win over the Marlins at Citi Field on 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 (25-33), who have won three in a row, have 104 games remaining in a span of 119 days, beginning with Sunday’s series finale. He believes that should give his team hope that it can begin making up ground.

But there is a lot of ground to make up. Acres of it.

Even after the win, the Mets trail National League East-leading Atlanta by 14 1⁄2 games and are 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 it can on a sustainable basis.

All of the publicly available statistical analysis indicates 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 entered 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, and had 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.”

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

“It’s a hard game,” Mendoza said. “[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 played only nine games together. Bichette has been in the lineup for every game but Soto has missed 17 games — 15 with a strained right calf and two with flu-like symptoms. Lindor hasn’t played since April 22 because of a strained left calf. Stearns said he does not have “an exact timeline” for when the shortstop will 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 the 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 his belief is well-founded, but it runs headlong into the actuality that the Mets already have played 58 of their 162 games (35.8% of the season).

As such, Stearns conceded that time is not an ally, given that Aug. 3 is the trade deadline. He said 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.”