MLB

Dickey scuffles again as Mets fall

HOUSTON — All of a sudden he is B.P. Dickey.

Need somebody to throw batting practice? R.A. Dickey has become that guy for the Mets. He has done it for much of the season, with the low point occurring yesterday when the best thing you could say was Dickey somehow lasted beyond the first inning.

“I don’t know if I have an acute explanation,” Dickey said after the Mets’ loss 7-3 to the Astros at Minute Maid Park. “What you saw unravel, a lot of it is baseball and a lot of it maybe I didn’t execute a couple of pitches. But usually it doesn’t spiral out like that.”

The numbers aren’t pretty. Over his last 25 innings, comprising four starts, Dickey has surrendered 36 hits, including four home runs. Yesterday the Mets were almost dead from the start, after Houston sent nine batters to the plate and scored four runs in the first inning against the knuckleballer.

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The worst start of Dickey’s Mets career ended in the sixth inning, after Bill Hall and pinch hitter Matt Downs each homered, giving the Astros a 6-2 lead. Dickey (1-5, 5.08 ERA) allowed six earned runs on 11 hits over 51/3 innings for his fifth straight loss after opening the season with a win.

It’s certainly not what the Mets had in mind when they rewarded Dickey with a two-year deal worth $7.8 million last winter, following a breakout 2010 season.

“The biggest thing from what I saw last year is he’s not getting ahead in the count,” manager Terry Collins said after the Mets’ three-game winning streak was snapped. “The knuckleball is his pitch and he’s got to make some pitches with it, and that’s a difficult pitch to control.”

Dickey was so desperate, he began abandoning his knuckleball after the second inning and relied mostly on conventional pitches. The change in approach allowed the Mets’ bullpen to remain intact, getting Dickey into the sixth.

“You just have to try to fight,” Dickey said. “I told Terry, ‘Just let me eat up innings.’ Don’t let this game cause us to lose two or three more in a row because it eats the bullpen up.”

Most of the hits came early. Michael Bourn smacked a leadoff triple and scored on Clint Barmes’ groundout. But then it got ugly, as Dickey surrendered five straight hits. Hunter Pence and Carlos Lee singled in succession — Lee’s hit was No. 2,000 in his career — before Brett Wallace delivered an RBI double. Chris Johnson and Bill Hall then each added RBI singles.

The Mets got a run back in the third on Justin Turner’s RBI single, following Jose Reyes’ leadoff single. Daniel Murphy’s homer — his third of the season — leading off the fourth pulled the Mets within 4-2.

The Mets have little choice but to keep giving Dickey chances, as the cupboard is bare with Chris Young and Jenrry Mejia out for the season. But the Mets also need to see improvement from Dickey, and fast.

“My experience with knuckleball pitchers is they study it, that’s their art and their trade,” Collins said. “Nobody in that room probably knows more about the knuckleball and how to throw it and correct it than R.A. Dickey does.”

mpuma@nypost.com