Mets' scoreless streak extended to 19 innings in loss to Seattle

SEATTLE — Maybe it’s too early to engage in hardcore scoreboard-watching, premature to track the daily wiggling in the National League standings.

But it’s mid-August now, seemingly all of a sudden. The Mets are in the thick of a playoff chase. Other teams’ outcomes are just as important as theirs. And the fuller slate each night reveals a certain truth: They are picking a bad time to have a bad time.

The Mets lost to the Mariners, 4-0, on Saturday night, combining another dormant offensive effort with Sean Manaea’s shortest start of the season. They had lost to Seattle, 6-0, on Friday night and have failed to score in 19 consecutive innings.

After dropping one series in June and July combined, the Mets have lost two this month.

But it is, of course, about more than just the Mets. Atlanta ended a six-game losing streak earlier Saturday, so the Mets (61-56) fell to a half-game back of the last NL wild-card spot, leapfrogged by their division rival. San Diego and Arizona have gotten hot and have put several games of cushion between them and the rest of the pack. San Francisco and St. Louis remain relevant, too, right behind the Mets.

All that means that this is shaping up to be a grindy, stressful, potentially fun seven weeks.

“You can’t panic,” Brandon Nimmo said. “There has to be a difference between urgency and panic. If you panic, you might as well throw your cleats down and let’s go home right now. But if you have a sense of urgency and you understand that each game is very important — which this group does — [you’re] not throwing away any games. But we acknowledge again that hey, we’re trying to get this turned around sooner rather than later.”

Seattle righthander Logan Gilbert — another member of the best rotation in baseball, central to the Mariners’ AL West aspirations — stifled the Mets across seven innings. He gave up three hits, including two by Francisco Lindor, and a walk, with the defense helping to prevent any real trouble.

Nimmo called the Mets’ offensive futility “definitely surprising.” Carlos Mendoza said he is “not at all” concerned about it.

“They pitched well,” J.D. Martinez said. “It’s that simple.”

An early indication that this one would not go the Mets’ way: In the top of the first, Martinez fired a hard ground ball up the middle, which in a slightly different version of events could have yielded runners at the corners with one out.

Instead, second baseman Jorge Polanco made a diving stop behind the bag, then flipped the ball from his glove to shortstop Leo Rivas. The 5-8 Rivas used his bare hand to reel in the slightly high feed as he came over the base and threw to first for an inning-ending double play.

“It sucks, you know?” Martinez said. “It would’ve changed that whole inning.”

Mendoza said: “Probably one of the better plays we’ve seen this year.”

The Mets had five of the seven hardest batted balls of the game. Those accounted for five outs.

Manaea lasted only three innings against Seattle (62-56), allowing three runs — all in the first — and four hits. He walked a season high-tying five, which drove his pitch count up to 85, with each inning longer than the last.

That marked a sudden end to a remarkable run for Manaea, who in his previous two outings tossed 14 shutout innings with 21 strikeouts. “I tried my best out there,” he said. “They made me work.”

The Mets will try to avoid the sweep against Luis Castillo (9-11, 3.48 ERA) on Sunday.

“In playoff baseball, [which] is essentially what you’re getting to, it comes down to one or two pitches — maybe three or four — throughout a game,” Nimmo said. “Which team capitalizes on those best?”

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.