Three starts ago, when he lost a 4-0 decision to Atlanta, one didn’t have to squint hard to feel encouraged. There was little redeeming in this outing from Peterson. Before that against San Francisco, it was 2.3 percent. Against Atlanta, it was a 7.5 percent chance before the game was shortened by rain. That’s becoming par for the course for Peterson: The club had a 13.9 percent chance to win when he finished his outing in Cincinnati. By the time he departed with the Mets down 6-2, his team had a 4.8 percent chance to win. Peterson allowed a dozen baserunners in his five frames. “You go through his outings, there’s been a lot of balls in the middle of the plate.” “He’s been inconsistent with his command,” manager Buck Showalter said. The contact was hard from the very first pitch, a ringing double to left-center by Lane Thomas. Peterson’s season-long nightmare continued on Monday, as he allowed six runs on nine hits in five innings. Through the season’s first seven weeks, too many games have looked like Monday’s, and too many of those have been started by David Peterson.

Next up: the Rays, the team that’s off to the best start in two decades. This series in the nation’s capital closed out a stretch of 13 consecutive games against teams that lost at least 94 contests last season the Mets went 4-9 in them. In splitting the four games over the weekend, New York halted its series losing streak at five it still hasn’t won a series since it was in Los Angeles this time last month. They’ve now gone 52 offensive innings without a home run. Their pitching staff mustered one zero in eight tries all day. They were fooled by a Little League first-and-third stolen base. They miscommunicated in the outfield to turn a fly ball into a triple.

They had a runner picked off first with the bases loaded. The Mets submitted their version of an Aristocrats joke in a 10-3 loss to the Nationals in Monday’s series finale.

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