The Mets are running out of patience with the maddeningly inconsistent Oliver Perez.
Amid the rubble of a 13-1 loss to the last-place Pirates, which started with Perez’s second-inning meltdown, Billy Wagner said what many of his teammates appeared to be thinking about the left-hander.
Fresh off an 11-inning win the night before that forced the Mets to use virtually their entire bullpen, Wagner blasted Perez for lasting just 1 2/3 innings, matching his career low, against one of the worst teams in baseball.
“Perez has honestly got to step up and know that we’ve just used every guy in our bullpen the night before,” a visibly disgusted Wagner said. “He can’t come out there and decide that, gee, he hasn’t got it today and so be it.”
Asked if talking to Perez about his notoriously short attention span was like trying to talk to a wall, Wagner pointed his finger and said: “Pretty much.”
Of course, guilty parties were everywhere at Shea Stadium today. The Mets – in the ugliest fashion possible – snapped a three-game winning streak and ended the month of April a disappointing 14-12 overall.
As if getting two-hit by soft-tossing lefty Tom Gorzelanny (pre-game ERA of 8.46) and two Pittsburgh relievers wasn’t embarrassing enough, the Mets were 0-for-9 with runners in scoring position, made a season-high three errors and had Jose Reyes commit a costly mental blunder at shortstop.
In other words, it was no way to finish a homestand when the next stop is Arizona, home of the NL’s best record this season.
“The tone was set early, [Perez] . . . was all over the place, and we didn’t help him out by catching the ball,” Willie Randolph said. “We didn’t get any timely hitting. It was like how we’ve played all year in one package.”
A broken water main at nearby Citi Field delayed the start of the game by 40 minutes, but the Mets weren’t about to let Perez use that as an excuse for the miserable pitching that followed. Perez walked five of the 13 Pirates he faced, including two hitters on just four pitches each, before departing with a 5-0 deficit amid what would be a seven-run second inning by Pittsburgh.
Just two of the seven runs attributed to Perez in the inning were earned thanks to a bases-loaded error by Luis Castillo at second base that helped open the floodgates. But the Mets were in no mood to call Perez a hard-luck loser on this day. Not after watching the 26-year-old throw just 28 of his 55 pitches for strikes and repeatedly lose focus before forcing the Mets to resort to Nelson Figueroa and their worn-out bullpen.
Randolph appeared to question Perez’s mental toughness after the pitcher came apart in the wake of Castillo’s error and Reyes being badly out of position in the same inning on a rundown attempt at second.
“He has to be mature enough and strong enough to let that pass,” Randolph said.
The Mets put up with Perez (2-2) because he can also be tantalizingly brilliant, too. This wasn’t one of those times, and Perez readily admitted it.
“Sometimes you don’t have your stuff,” he said. “I had trouble throwing strikes. Everybody can have a bad day. Today was one of those days.”
bhubbuch@nypost.com