Credit: Mary Holt-USA TODAY Sports

The Mets’ seven-game winning streak came to a screeching halt in St. Petersburg this weekend with a three-game sweep at the hands of the Tampa Bay Rays.

More injuries during the series added to the growing list of health issues for the team. Despite this, at 18-16, the Mets still hold onto a half-game lead in the division over the Philadelphia Phillies heading into a week of games against NL East foes.

3 Up

Just as it was a little tough to come up with three Downs after the Mets won their seventh game in a row last Thursday, we’re going to try to find some silver linings after getting swept in Florida.

Hitting Home Runs

The Mets finally hit some home runs!

Every single run they scored in this series came via the long ball after hitting five of them in three games (a rate double what they had coming into the series). Unfortunately, they only scored eight runs.

New York is no longer last in the league in total home runs — that now belongs to the Pittsburgh Pirates — but they are now tied for last in slugging (.347) with the Pirates because they really didn’t hit much outside of the homers.

I wrote after the last series about how the Mets were piecing together runs with walks and singles. In this series, they did the opposite. The next step will hopefully be to combine those two processes if they really want to consistently score runs at a higher clip.

David Peterson‘s Location

David Peterson continued his trend of two good starts for every one bad start. After a poor performance last weekend — he didn’t make it out of the second inning against the Diamondbacks — Peterson pitched wonderfully Friday.

The lefty lasted 7.1 innings, at one point retiring 17 Rays in a row after a rocky second inning. Luis Rojas left Peterson, who was just over 80 pitches, in for the eighth inning. He then allowed a homer and another base runner, who scored when Trevor May came in. Despite the letdown at the end of his appearance, Peterson made great advances against the Rays.

The previous Friday, Peterson struggled to throw anything in or around the zone. Against Tampa Bay, he was peppering fastballs (which he threw more than double his yearly average) and sliders around the plate.

He’s a guy who succeeds when he pitches to contact and keeps the ball low and away from lefties and down and in against righties. He did that Friday and pitched deeper than he ever had before.

The Legend of Patrick Mazeika

After grounding out in his first career at-bat, Patrick Mazeika‘s next three plate appearances went like this: game-winning fielder’s choice, RBI walk to cushion a lead, game-winning fielder’s choice.

He’s largely been relegated to a pinch-hitting role since being called up to the majors, as he’s not exactly known for his bat. But he was plugged into Jeff McNeil‘s designated hitter position on Sunday when McNeil left due to injury, then he notched his first career hit in his second at-bat of the day doing this:

Of course, it was a home run.

His one home run and four RBI in eight plate appearances give him a 124 wRC+ for the year (in a small sample size). He, unfortunately, doesn’t have any experience in the field outside of first base and catcher, so he’ll most likely stick to his role as a fill-in later in games. It’s working for him now, though.

Credit: Mary Holt-USA TODAY Sports

3 Down

Injuries

Michael Conforto and McNeil both hurt one of their hamstring muscles during Sunday’s loss. Unfortunately, they’re just additional tallies to the Mets’ current injury issues at this point.

With Conforto and McNeil down and potentially on the injured list, that’s now five of the Mets’ nine starters from Opening Day currently injured. (Jacob deGrom, J.D. Davis and Brandon Nimmo are the others.) If the two are placed on the IL, that will make nine players on the team’s 40-man roster on the sidelines. Four more guys — Noah Syndergaard, Carlos Carrasco, José Martinez, and Dellin Betances — are on the 60-day IL.

While the depth of the team helped them out over their seven-game winning streak preceding this series, it’s not a surprise to see the same depth not be able to power them through a solid pitching staff like the Rays.

The worst part of these injuries is there aren’t really clear timetables for anyone. DeGrom will throw a bullpen Tuesday, and we hope he’ll be able to come back a couple of days later. Nimmo had to return from a rehab assignment because his hand hurt again. McNeil doesn’t know if his injury will require him to sit down for 10 days. Carrasco’s timetable is no longer clear once the team shut him down a couple of weeks ago due to fatigue.

They may have to play short in the bullpen for a little while to give the bench its depth back. (After Conforto and McNeil left Sunday, they had one man — Tomás Nido — available on the bench.) With two NL East foes incoming this week, the Mets are going to need guys like Kevin Pillar, Jonathan Villar, and the rest of the bench mob — which now includes a handful of Triple-A guys — to exceed expectations again.

Bullpen

It seems as if the taxing of the bullpen during the first month-and-a-half of the season finally caught up to the staff in Tampa.

Everyone — from Edwin Diaz, Miguel Castro, and Trevor May to Jacob Barnes and Sean Reid-Foley — struggled.

All 11 relievers pitched in the series, and they combined to allow 14 earned runs (15 total) in 12.2 innings, including 11 earned on Saturday when the bullpen had to piece together the whole game.

In fairness to the pitchers, there were some instances in which they maybe weren’t called upon in the best circumstances. Like Diaz when the team was down four-plus runs, and May after Peterson allowed a couple of base runners rather than starting the eighth inning on Friday himself. But this is a results-oriented business, and they didn’t get it done over the last three games.

This is a series the bullpen, which has been one of the best in baseball, as a whole wished never happened. Ideally, they can forget about it and come back stronger against a Braves lineup that seems to be rounding into shape.

James McCann‘s Offense

Almost every Met has had their struggles on offense this year, but those struggles have partially or fully been offset with stretches of success.

James McCann has struggled, and his small bits of success have come in low-impact ways. He has 19 hits in 95 at-bats this year, and 18 of them are singles. He has one home run and no doubles. (He had 10 total home runs and doubles in 97 at-bats last year.) He has seven RBI and six double plays.

Though he’s in the top quarter of the league in average exit velocity, he’s hitting a majority of his balls on the ground. He has the fifth-highest ground ball rate (59.1 percent) of any batter with at least 90 plate appearances. And when he connects with the ball, he’s not barreling it, as he’s bottom five percent in the league in barrel percentage. He’s in the bottom seven percent of the league in expected slugging and weighted on-base average, too.

McCann is loved in the pitcher’s room according to all reports, and his defense and framing have been average. He’s one of the few everyday starters that is still healthy. His bat needs to pick up while the other guys are out.