MIAMI — The good news for the Mets is they don’t have to face Jose Fernandez.
Otherwise, this severely challenged lineup might leave town on Wednesday having scored negative runs in three games against the Marlins.
Henderson Alvarez was handful enough for manager Terry Collins’ listless bunch on Tuesday, firing a complete-game shutout in the Mets’ 3-0 loss at Marlins Park.
The Mets (16-16) fell to .500 after a strong April, and will try to avoid getting swept three games in this series when Zack Wheeler faces Tom Koehler on Wednesday. On the road trip, the Mets are 2-5.
“We’ve got 130 games to go — we’re doing all right,” Collins said. “We’ll get it going. We came in and played the Rockies who were red hot and these guys are red hot here. We’re going to get hot, too.”
But the Mets also sound tired.
“It’s been a long trip. Colorado kind of takes it out of you,” Daniel Murphy said. “You go out there and we’re not used to it and by the time you get used to it we came back East.”
The 23-year-old Alvarez (2-2) allowed six hits over nine innings with seven strikeouts and a hit batsman while throwing 111 pitches. The Mets have scored just one run over their last 17 innings.
Bartolo Colon (2-5) rebounded from a dreadful performance at Colorado by holding the Marlins to three runs on seven hits with one walk and five strikeouts over seven innings. In five of his seven starts this season, the right-hander has held the opposition to three earned runs or fewer.
But against the Rockies on Friday he got pounded for seven runs on 10 hits over 4 ²/₃ innings. He had a similar outing against the Angels last month in which he surrendered nine runs over five innings.
“I was up in the zone [early], but after that I did a good job and I think I threw a good game,” said Colon, who allowed two runs in the first inning.
The Mets lineup went meekly. Murphy’s double in the sixth put runners on second and third with two outs, but Alvarez retired David Wright. In the fourth Juan Lagares doubled leading off, but was left stranded when Alvarez retired the next three batters, including Wright.
Wright, who finished 1-for-4, said he hit at least three balls soundly and called it “frustrating” not to get results.
“Especially against [Alvarez] when he has his ‘A’ stuff like tonight,” Wright said. “You have a good at-bat and you hit a ball hard, it’s pretty frustrating because you know that there’s not going to be many opportunities to cash in when he’s throwing the ball the way he is.”
Casey McGehee’s RBI single in the fifth gave the Marlins a 3-0 lead and continued the third baseman’s torment of the Mets.
It was McGehee’s RBI single off Gonzalez Germen’s leg in the ninth inning a night earlier that gave the Marlins a 4-3 victory. McGehee also contributed to an eighth-inning rally that night with a soft line-drive that Omar Quintanilla mishandled for a run scoring single.
Giancarlo Stanton just missed clearing the center-field fence in the first inning and settled for an RBI double that gave the Marlins their first run. McGehee’s ensuing RBI single extended the Marlins lead to 2-0.
Alvarez’s shutout was his fourth — the most in the major leagues by an active pitcher with 65 or fewer career starts. No other pitcher has more than two.
“We couldn’t mount anything,” Collins said. “We had to get a big hit as they got, and we didn’t get any tonight.”