The Mets Extend Their Streak to Eight against the Yankees—Their Losing Streak, that is!

By Nicholas Stix

How long ago their 11-1 start seems. They are now 27-34, and sinking like a rock, no matter how wonderfully their starters pitch.

Baseball “experts” are pushing them to trade Jacob deGrom or Noah Syndergaard, but those are their best pitchers, not to mention their best players!

There’s nothing anyone would give for either of them to make up for their irreparable loss. What are they going to get in return? A slugger, so they can lose 8-5, instead of 2-0?

It would be like 1977 all over again, when GM M. Donald Grant shipped Tom Seaver out of town, ushering in seven years of futility.

What the Mets need is speed on the base paths, in order to manufacture runs through bunting for base hits, legging out infield hits, stealing bases and doing the hit-and-run. Presently, only SS Ahmed Rosario and OF Brandon Nimmo have that sort of speed, and as base stealers, they’re both works in progress. But one thing every club has in its farm system is some speedy kids.

The Mets were built to win on the long ball, but that didn’t happen. They need to cut Jay Bruce and Jose Reyes loose. Bruce is a slugger who hasn’t slugged this season, and looks like a very old 31, while Ryes is a once-great player who at 35 (tomorrow) can’t run, hit (.139), pinch hit or play third base.

Manager Mickey Callaway needs to order aging, slow-footed veterans like Adrian Gonzalez and Asrubal Cabrera to bunt and hit against the shift, and bench them, if they refuse.

That’s just tinkering, to be sure, but it’s much more productive than shipping your club’s future out of town.

And in a few days, Yoenis Cespedes is due to make one of his cameo appearances , once his current minor league rehab stint is over.

Make that “was.” Cespedes was rehabbing a hip condition, but now a quad’s gone on him again. Young men don’t suffer from these sorts of nagging injuries.

A couple of years ago The Boss adjudged Cepedes, then officially 30, to be 40.

Foreign Hispanic players lying about their age, and getting big contracts they can’t earn is a not-so-venerable baseball tradition.

And lest I forget, Mickey Callaway deserves a lot of the blame for the team’s lousy play. He ruined its bullpen by playing Captain Hook with his starters early in the season (typically after five innings), and overused his relievers. At the time, I warned that this would happen. And all longtime Mets fans knew the team had never been able to live for long on a diet of homers, so the club’s one-dimensional offense goes on both Callaway and GM Sandy Alderson’s ledgers.