MLB

Protecting the future

The journey to the end of the season has arrived at the crossroads of Irrelevance and Surrender, with the Mets seeking an alternate route instead that will allow them to complete 2014 with their honor intact.

This patchwork team’s ability to compete against the big boys was put into perspective this weekend throughout a three-game sweep by the Tigers in which they were outscored by an aggregate of 20-4, while being outhit 15-3 on Saturday and 18-4 in yesterday’s 11-3 defeat.

The Mets have fought the good fight most of the way, but this club, comprised primarily of players not quite ready for prime time combined with veterans past their prime, looked helpless against Detroit, as if armed with Popsicle sticks in a knife fight.

The Tigers are imposing, no doubt about it, but they had lost eight of 14 — including two of three each to the Twins and White Sox, AL clubs that trail the Mets in the overall standings — before landing in Queens for a weekend buffet that turned into a feast.

You match up the lineups (not to mention the payroll), and you take the Mets in one position in the order: left field, where Eric Young Jr. trumps the Andy Dirks-Don Kelly combination, though it was Dirks’ sixth-inning, two-run homer off Dillon Gee yesterday that propelled the Tigers into a 4-3 lead.

Batting fifth for Detroit, Victor Martinez. Batting fifth for the Mets, Justin Turner.

It’s not simply that the Mets have lost four straight, including Wednesday’s 10-inning defeat to Atlanta, nor is it that in dropping to 58-70 the Mets are as far away from .500 as they have been in seven weeks, since dropping 12 under at 36-48 on July 6.

It’s that the Mets seem to be in a preserve-and-protect mode as daylight and the season draw shorter. It’s about nursing young players through this season so they are ready for next year.

And it can make for a difficult watch in a results-oriented business in which immediate results aren’t quite the bottom line for the organization.

Matt Harvey is pitching to an innings-limit, the imposition of which may subconsciously have contributed to diminishing returns from the right-hander, who has allowed more than a hit an inning while pitching to a 2.97 ERA with a .277 batting average-against in August after yielding .7 hits an inning with a 2.11 ERA and .192 average-against over the first four months.

Harvey talked about “being pretty tired” after Saturday’s effort, in which he allowed 13 hits and two runs in six-and-two-thirds innings to Detroit, but it’s fair to wonder whether machinations such as holding him back a day or removing him early from a game have conspired to create a different mind-set for the 24-year-old.

Manager Terry Collins and the organization are trying to do right by Harvey, no doubt about these being best intentions, but when Harvey isn’t quite allowed to be himself, then he isn’t. And the 2013 Mets suffer.

Daisuke Matsuzaka has been hired as a temp to fill a vacancy in the rotation because the organization doesn’t want to lean on prized young arms in the minors (or start their service clocks) by giving them an immediate taste of the majors.

OK, that’s understood. But when general manager Sandy Alderson said on Friday the organization, “[was] reluctant to bring them up to the major league level and have them overthrow or overextend at the end of their innings quota and come down with an injury,” that reeked of over-protectionism.

Even as the Mets are handling their kid pitchers with kid gloves, they are presenting a lineup filled with kids, such as Travis d’Arnaud, Juan Lagares and Wilmer Flores (spelled yesterday by Turner), who may not be quite equipped to handle the daily grind.

“We’re asking a lot of [players] to step up who are fairly new at this level and produce runs,” Collins said. “It’s a lot to ask of these guys, but so far they’ve risen to the occasion.

“We’ve been a resilient team.”

But now it gets tougher. Management is watching the clock and the calendar as much as the scoreboard. Winning isn’t necessarily the most important thing the rest of the way.

Rex Ryan says he does not approve.