The road trip from hell has ended, but the Mets brought their hellish skid home with them.
Carlos Mendoza’s crew had built-in excuses over a 10-games-in-10-days, four-city voyage that ended with three smackdowns in Seattle.
They had no such alibi on Tuesday when they began an important, nine-game homestand with the kind of faceplant that Pete Alonso experienced in the sixth inning.
A 9-4, series-opening loss to the AL West-worst A’s in front of 31,923 at Citi Field meant the Mets have been outscored 31-5 over this four-game losing streak in which their hitting has not done enough and their pitching has been destroyed.
Paul Blackburn took the baton from his battered rotation mates and continued the trend.
In his third start with the Mets, he was booed in his home debut against the club that dealt him at the end of July.
Blackburn, excellent in his first two tries with the Mets, was lit up for seven runs (six earned) in four innings in which he dug a hole too deep to escape.
There should not be any qualms about the effort level of the Mets (61-58).
Down by six runs after four innings, they got within reach in the fifth inning, when Jesse Winker’s RBI double and Alonso’s two-run single restored some hope.
Three times they brought the tying run to the plate, but reliever Austin Adams — a Met in spring training who was dealt to Oakland — was overpowering in retiring Jeff McNeil, Jose Iglesias and Francisco Alvarez.
After Alvarez struck out, an animated Adams dramatically raised his arms and roared coming off the mound in an appearance that appeared to mean more to him.
The Mets were still battling and increasingly bruised in the sixth, when Alonso made a remarkable stop and paid for it.
A ground ball down the first-base line from Miguel Andujar had beaten him — but Alonso angled his dive and reached behind him to successfully knock the ball down.
An off-kilter body shifted its weight from stomach to face, his nose scraping against the dirt and Alonso rising with a bloody nose — and rising to throw home a bit too late to prevent another A’s run from scoring.
The A’s scored twice in the frame in a rare game in which Jose Butto (two runs on seven base runners in two innings) was knocked around.
There probably should be some qualms about the Mets rotation and struggling offense.
During this four-game funk, Jose Quintana, Sean Manaea, Luis Severino and now Blackburn have allowed 19 runs in 18 innings.
Blackburn’s night started poorly and didn’t get much better.
He loaded the bases in the first inning and watched Seth Brown drill a double into right-center that cleared those bases for a three-run ditch.
The Mets got one back in the second with an Iglesias RBI single, but a four-run third inning made the deficit unwieldy.
One run scored on what might have been a double play, third baseman Iglesias botching a chopped ground ball that skipped into left field, before Shea Langeliers demolished a three-run homer for a 7-1 lead.
Injury was added to insult in the form of J.D. Martinez, who was removed from the game with a contused left elbow after getting drilled with a 99.6-mph fastball in his lone plate appearance in the second inning.
Mark Vientos replaced Martinez and contributed one of nine hits on a night when the Mets generated much more traffic than runs.
They went 4-for-16 with runners in scoring position and left 10 on base.
After their explosion to start the fifth inning, they couldn’t scratch across a run against a quality Oakland bullpen that held them to two hits in five innings.