MLB

Amazin’s can’t let bottom-feeders off hook

NOT CLOSE ENOUGH, DUDA! Lucas Duda unsuccessfully tries to make a diving catch on a ball hit by Justin Ruggiano during the seventh inning of the Mets’ 7-5 loss to the Marlins last night at Citi Field. (Getty Images)

Compared to the Miami Marlins, the Mets can seem eternally stable and reasonable, decent and generous. An organization with a plan and a conscience.

It’s probably more important that the Mets, when held up against the Marlins, look like a very good baseball team, and Good Lord, was that not the case last night at Citi Field.

The first 2013 matchup of these lightweights went wrong for the Mets, who dropped a 7-5 contest and — in allowing the Marlins to pick up their first victory of the season — violated the very tenet their manager discussed prior to the game.

“Especially when you play the real, real good teams, those are going to be tough to win,” Terry Collins said. “So you’ve got to win the games against teams you’re supposed to.”

In theory, the Mets now 2-2, are supposed to beat the Marlins, who gutted their team and their payroll over the winter under the horrid leadership of owner Jeffrey Loria, a New York City resident. Maybe the Mets will wind up winning most of the remaining 18 matchups with Miami.

Yet Collins stressed that, when teams go over their seasons, “You look at the games you should’ve won against teams you should’ve beat, the games you got beat at: ‘Hey, look what happened in these games.’ ”

Hey, look what happened in this game: The Mets went 2-for-11 with runners in scoring position, putting nine runners on base (six hits and three walks) against starter Alex Sanabia in the first six innings and bringing none of them home — wasting a strong start by Jeremy Hefner. Perennial headache creator Jordany Valdespin, hitting leadoff, stroked a leadoff single in the third inning, only to get picked off first base one out later with David Wright, the Mets’ best hitter, at bat.

And if you held out hope the Mets, who fell behind 1-0 in the second inning, would simply outlast their visitors, that optimism imploded in the seventh inning when the Marlins, aided by Ruben Tejada’s third error of the young season and a poor decision by reliever Greg Burke, put up five runs. The Mets’ offense woke up late, scoring all of its runs from the seventh inning onward, but that proved insufficient because the renovated bullpen couldn’t keep the game close.

The Marlins’ arrival at Citi Field marked the second of five season-opening series in which the Mets will not face a team that posted a winning record last year. The Phillies, their next opponent, went 81-81, while the Marlins follow the Padres and precede the Twins and Rockies in a conga line of 2012 duds. The Philadelphia-Minnesota-Colorado road trip that follows this weekend is a potential gold mine for the Mets.

Last year, the Mets went 12-6 against the surprisingly terrible Marlins, and that essentially made the difference between the Mets’ 74-88 mark and Miami’s 69-93. Against the other six teams with losing records on their schedule — the Cubs, Rockies, Astros, Pirates, Padres and Blue Jays — they put up a lousy 16-20 mark. They were 14-11 versus .500 teams (the Phillies and Diamondbacks) and a putrid 32-51 when they played clubs that wound up with a winning record.

You can’t simply say, “They have to play better against bad teams,” because the Mets are themselves a bad team. They’re simply going to be outplayed sometimes.

The key will be to not lose the games in which they have a chance to beat bad teams, and last night absolutely qualified as that type of blown opportunity.

In addition to the Mets’ offensive woes — “Hopefully, we’re going to start breaking out of it here very soon,” Collins said after the game — there was the brutal top of the seventh. Tejada bobbled Donovan Solano’s leadoff grounder to kick off the festivities. With Marlins on first and second and none out, Burke fielded Juan Pierre’s bunt and threw to third, where he had no play, loading the bases and setting the five-run frame in motion.

Catcher John Buck called for a play at third, Collins explained post-game, yet Burke got a late jump on the ball and should have known to ignore his catcher and throw to first.

As Collins acknowledged, if you’re going to be king of the runts, you have to pick on those your own size. The Mets’ yearlong vibe could be determined by their ability to keep down their fellow low achievers in April, and they are not off to a very encouraging start.