Max Scherzer, Francisco Lindor, Starling Marte and Brandon Nimmo were the four highest-paid Mets on the field in Tuesday’s 7-6 loss to the Yankees, and each came up small at various times in the Subway Series opener — something that’s happened more than the Mets would like this season.

Scherzer was the first culprit. He was staked to a 5-1 lead in the third inning after the Mets offense got to Luis Severino early.

But Scherzer couldn’t protect it. He was hit hard in the top of the fourth, done in by bullet singles from slumping Kyle Higashioka and Anthony Rizzo, a 101-mph double from the struggling Anthony Volpe and a 106-mph two-run homer by another scuffling Yankee, DJ LeMahieu.

But it was a bloop single to right by Jake Bauers that knocked in a pair of runs and ended Scherzer’s night.

The 3 ⅓-inning outing matched Scherzer’s shortest of the season (non-sticky-stuff-ejection category) and the six earned runs matched a season high. His ERA jumped to 4.45.

Nimmo homered to tie the game in the bottom of the first, but his miscue in center field on a Volpe fly ball in the sixth, when the score was tied 6-6, helped cost the Mets what turned out to be the winning run.

The normally sure-handed Nimmo said he thought about diving to make the catch, but ultimately didn’t need to and he ended up not even getting a glove on it. The play was — generously, some would say — ruled a double for Volpe and sent Billy McKinney to third.

McKinney scored the go-ahead run on Josh Donaldson’s pinch-hit sacrifice fly later in the inning.

Fast-forward past Mets reliever Drew Smith’s seventh-inning sticky-stuff ejection.

In the bottom of the eighth, with the Mets still trailing by a run, they loaded the bases after Yankees left-hander Wandy Peralta walked Mark Canha, allowed a single to Nimmo and, with one out, hit Jeff McNeil with a pitch to bring up the switch-hitting Lindor.

Aaron Boone replaced Peralta with Clay Holmes, forcing Lindor to hit lefty. Lindor entered the game with an OPS of just .640 against righties compared to an .871 OPS versus lefties.

The move worked. Lindor — needing just a fly ball to tie the game — struck out on a 3-2 sinker.

After another hitless night, only 11 qualified batters have a lower average than Lindor’s .213.

Marte, whose .644 OPS ranks ahead of just 10 qualified hitters in the majors, got Holmes to a full count, as well, before he fanned on a slider to end the threat.

The Mets never recovered. It looks like that kind of season.

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The news that Peter Laviolette has been named the Rangers’ new head coach brings the 2005-06 Stanley Cup winner back to the region where he started his career behind the bench.

Hired by the Islanders in 2001 at just 36 years old, he lasted just two seasons on Long Island before getting fired by the same man who brought him on, Mike Milbury, who was known for his impatience.

While Laviolette was there, he displayed signs of what were to become signature traits of his career — some of which the Rangers would like him to bring to Madison Square Garden.

Chief among them is Laviolette’s ability to immediately improve a team in his first season.

The Islanders — unlike the 107-point Rangers team he’s inheriting from Gerard Gallant — had missed the playoffs in seven straight seasons prior to Laviolette’s arrival.

Laviolette doubled the Islanders’ win total in his first season, from 21 to 42, and nearly doubled their points total, from 52 to 96.

More importantly, they reached the postseason in each of Laviolette’s two seasons.

That’s where the success stopped, though. The Isles were knocked out in the first round in each year, prompting the tempestuous Milbury to fire Laviolette following the 2002-03 season.

Laviolette was hired by the Hurricanes in the middle of the 2003-04 season and worked some of the same magic, taking the club to the NHL title in his first full season behind the bench in 2005-06, following the 2004-05 work stoppage.

Laviolette also reached the Stanley Cup Finals with Philadelphia in 2010 and Nashville in 2016, and will no doubt face similar expectations at the Garden.

It will be a daunting task for Laviolette, now 58, whose entire 12-game NHL playing career came as a Rangers defenseman in 1988.

It has been 17 years since he won the Cup, and, as Larry Brooks noted recently, there are few coaches in history to do so with multiple teams.

Scotty Bowman went the longest between Cup titles as a head coach, winning his third straight with Montreal in 1979 and then another in his first season as the head coach of the Penguins in 1992.

A’s fans showed up to Oakland Coliseum — for a change — on Tuesday night as part of a “reverse boycott” in protest of owner John Fisher’s management of the franchise and plans to move the team to Las Vegas. An announced attendance of 27, 759 noisy, sign-wielding East Bay diehards watched the A’s win their seventh straight game, moving them out of last place in the MLB standings.

While Miami’s Luis Arraez makes a run at becoming the first .400 hitter since Ted Williams — he dipped all the way to .382 after Tuesday night’s 0-for-5 — there’s another offensive stat worth keeping an eye on now that MLB has tried to get more action back in the game: the hitting streak.

Texas’ Marcus Semien has the longest of the season: a 25-game streak that ended earlier this month.

Trea Turner, then with the Dodgers, topped the majors with a 26-game streak a year ago.

No hitter has hit the 30-game mark since Freddie Freeman in 2016 with Atlanta.

And much like with Arraez’s attempt at getting to .400, other players believe hitting streaks might experience a resurgence thanks in part to the ban on extreme shifts.

“Hitting streaks are really hard and definitely not appreciated enough,’’ LeMahieu told The Post. “On-base streaks, too, but hitting streaks are obviously harder and more fun to talk about.”

LeMahieu said he knew Semien’s streak was in the mid-20s before it was snapped on June 7.

“You don’t hear much about them these days, but I think the fans like it,’’ LeMahieu said.

Another milestone that should re-enter the record books this year is the 200-hit season.

Freeman had an MLB-high 199 hits a year ago, and no one has gotten to 200 since Whit Merrifield, then with the Royals, had 206 in 2019.

Not surprisingly, considering Arraez’s production this year, the Miami infielder is on pace for 217.