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Try it freeYet again, it is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Met.
The club that threatened to make a run for the NL East crown while looking dominant in a sweep of the first-place Phillies last week responded by dropping a weekend series to a non-contender with a roster that collectively is paid less than Juan Soto this season.
The same lineup that set a franchise record with 19 runs in a home game Friday scored once Sunday.
Kodai Senga, untouchable while striking out the side in Sunday’s second inning, was booed after allowing a fourth run in the fourth.
The club’s inconsistencies were highlighted with one more dud, this time a 5-1 letdown in front of a sellout crowd of 43,302 unhappy fans at Citi Field who watched the mediocre Marlins take three of four.
During a month in which the Mets set a franchise homer mark and averaged the most runs per game in the majors, they outscored their opponents by 21 and somehow finished 11-17.
Through five months of sometimes brilliant, sometimes abysmal and always inconsistent play, the Mets (73-64) have enticed and enraged their way to four games clear of the Reds for the third and final NL wild-card spot entering September.
One poster boy for the volatility took the mound Sunday. Senga struck out six, but allowed five runs on seven hits and two walks in 4 ²/₃ innings.
Through 13 starts, the one-time ace had a 1.47 ERA and seemed destined for the All-Star Game. Through nine starts on the other side of a hamstring strain that sent him to the IL, Senga has pitched to a 5.91 ERA.
The righty dug the Mets an immediate hole — a first-inning walk, single and sacrifice fly putting the Mets in a ditch from which they never recovered — served up a two-run homer to Agustín Ramírez in the third and heard jeers in the fourth, when a Liam Hicks double and Heriberto Hernández single scored another.
As has been the case for nine consecutive starts, Senga could not finish the sixth inning and this time could not complete the fifth, either, pulled amid a rough fifth inning for the Mets that was the low point of the afternoon.
After a Javier Sanoja double, Xavier Edwards laid down a beauty of a bunt along the third base line that prompted both corner infielders to charge. Brett Baty fielded and threw a strike to no one at first, Pete Alonso having come in for a bunt toward first base and Jeff McNeil not covering in time, the ball sailing into foul territory and allowing the fifth Marlins run to score.
The Mets lineup, meanwhile, only showed some literal fight.
Both benches and dugouts emptied in the seventh after Sandy Alcantara grazed Mark Vientos’ leg with a 90.4 mph changeup, and the two locked eyes and exchanged words. No punches or shoves were thrown in the brief scuffle. More to the point, the Mets offense was not jolted awake, squeaking across one run in the frame and silent otherwise.
Alcantara, looking like an ace the Mets should have traded for at the deadline, allowed just four hits and a walk in seven strong innings.
The Mets only had a couple of opportunities against the hard-throwing righty and largely failed to cash them in.
In the second, McNeil doubled with one out and was left there as Vientos and Baty were retired.
Francisco Lindor reached second an inning later, and Soto sent a shot that might have scraped the clouds but came down in the leaping Joey Wiemer’s glove at the right field wall.
Soto, who has lived on base recently, reached third and Brandon Nimmo walked in the sixth inning, but Alonso’s groundout ended the threat.