SAN DIEGO — The Mets needed Mad Max, but got the sad version instead Sunday.
Resembling the pitcher who underwhelmed for so much of the first half, Max Scherzer gave the Mets one last pre-All-Star-break clunker, while the lineup behind him started its vacation a day early.
It translated into a 6-2 loss to the Padres at Petco Park that siphoned any momentum the Mets hoped to carry into the break.
Their season’s best six-game winning streak that ended Saturday a distant memory, the Mets lost the series and fell to six games below .500.
Francisco Alvarez and Francisco Lindor carried the team offensively to a three-game sweep in Arizona to begin the road trip, but the Mets need other contributors.
None emerged over the last two games, in which the Mets combined to score only three runs.
Scherzer reached the All-Star break with a 4.31 ERA after allowing five earned runs on six hits with seven strikeouts and three walks.
Manny Machado’s two homers accounted for all of the damage against Scherzer.
The right-hander has allowed 18 homers in 16 starts this season.
“I have got to pitch better, there is no other option here,” Scherzer said. “I don’t think it’s necessary to reinvent the wheel — just execute better and be more consistent. When you do that, that is when you can chew through lineups and right now I’m just not consistent.”
Scherzer fell into an immediate hole on Machado’s three-run homer in the first inning on a hanging slider.
It marked a seventh straight start in which Scherzer allowed a homer — he surrendered three solo blasts in his start Tuesday in Arizona.
On this day, Ha-Seong Kim singled leading off the game and Fernando Tatis Jr. delivered a double with one out before Machado unloaded to left field.
“The worst thing to have is an inconsistent pitch and you don’t know where you are going to be able to locate it,” Scherzer said, referring to his slider. “I have always been able to pitch with a slider, been able to get that thing down and away and … I am leaving it in the middle of the plate at the wrong time. That is why I am getting beat.”
The Mets received consecutive singles from Jeff McNeil and D.J. Stewart in the second inning against Joe Musgrove before Alvarez hit into an inning-ending double play.
In the fourth the Mets loaded the bases when Pete Alonso and McNeil were hit by pitches in succession after Lindor singled.
But all three runners were left stranded as Musgrove struck out Stewart and Alvarez to end the inning.
Musgrove pitched six scoreless innings, a day after left-hander Blake Snell accomplished the same for the Padres.
Last year in the NL wild-card series Musgrove dominated the Mets with seven scoreless innings in which he allowed only one hit, helping the Padres clinch the series.
“He’s done this twice now where he’s pitched really well against us, so we need to come up with a little different plan if we were to face him in the playoffs or the next time,” Brandon Nimmo said. “But he is a good pitcher. When he hits his spots and he’s really moving the ball around the plate with all his pitches, it’s tough to come up with a plan on him.”
Machado returned to torment Scherzer in the fifth with a two-run homer to right that extended the Padres’ lead to 5-0.
The homer, which followed a Tatis single, was Machado’s third in the series.
Mark Canha was plunked leading off the sixth — the fourth hit batter of the game by Musgrove — before Lindor struck out and Alonso hit into the Mets’ third double play of the game.
Canha’s two-run double in the eighth got the Mets on the scoreboard. Luis Guillorme doubled leading off and Nimmo walked before Canha — who entered the game in the first inning to replace Tommy Pham (sore groin) — delivered.
“In the mathematical world the road trip was OK,” manager Buck Showalter said. “But some of the math, we don’t want it to work against us. We know we have got to win ballgames regardless of how successful or unsuccessful road trips are looked at.”
