Braves 4, Mets 0; Braves 4, Mets 2: Stay in Atlanta Costs Mets Two Games and a Pitcher

“Ideally, in a perfect world, yeah,” Collins said of Bay. “Which you know, now it’s not really perfect.”

?If by that he meant that things could not get much worse, then yes, the world is not perfect for the Mets right now. With their pitching staff in a state of near disarray because of heavy use and Chris Young’s shoulder injury, they were forced to play a doubleheader they wanted no part of, and not surprisingly, they were swept by the Atlanta Braves.

?In games that are starting to have an air of ominous inevitability, the Mets lost twice, 4-2 in the first game and 4-0 in the second, a game in which they were held to two hits and made one costly base-running mistake.

?They have dropped seven games in a row, 10 of 11, and their 4-11 record is the worst in the National League.

From ownership to the front office to the players, the Mets desperately wanted to get off to a fast start this season. Instead, the losses are coming in bunches, with four in three miserable days. The seven-game slide is their longest losing streak since the end of the 2004 season, and it is the first time since 1982 that the Mets endured four losses in consecutive doubleheaders.

? “Hopefully this is kind of an eye-opening little streak for us — that we need to get better, we need to improve, and there’s a lot of things we need to work on,” David Wright said.

?But it may also be an eye-opening streak for the fans, who are increasingly being turned off. That, obviously, is not good news for the Mets’ organization, which needs to generate more revenue through tickets sales and sponsorships to help stabilize their murky financial situation.

? The player the Mets will turn to now to stabilize matters on the field is coming from Class AAA Buffalo. Dillon Gee will be called up to pitch Sunday in place of the right-handed Young, who was placed on the 15-day disabled list with biceps tendinitis in his right shoulder, making Saturday even worse.

?Young, who had been impressive in his first two starts, going 1-0 with a 1.46 earned run average, developed soreness in his shoulder, which is worrisome even if he and the Mets have played down the severity.

?Young had arthroscopic shoulder surgery in 2009 and made only four starts in 2010 because of lingering soreness. He said this injury was not related to the old one, and that it should not prevent him from coming off the disabled list when he is eligible April 26.

?“The irritation of the biceps tendon is just lingering, and the best thing for it is rest,” he said.

?Young said he had not had a magnetic resonance imaging test on the shoulder, in part because he did not think it would be helpful, even though M.R.I.’s are often standard with any injury involving the shoulder or elbow.

Young had been scheduled to pitch Friday, but when the shoulder pain flared, his start was pushed to Sunday and the relief pitcher D. J. Carrasco was called upon to replace him. Then Friday’s game was rained out, and the Braves rescheduled it as part of a doubleheader Saturday, which irritated the Mets because of their vulnerable pitching. Instead of being able to skip Carrasco, they then had to start him and Gee in two divisional games.

The Mets protested to Major League Baseball, but the rescheduling decision was upheld. Collins was asked if he understood why the Braves would choose to press their competitive advantage.

“Do I understand?” he responded. “I don’t really care to comment on it at all. They told me I’ve got to play. I’ve got to play.”

Once they did, it did not go so well. In the first game, the Braves hit four solo home runs, including one from Chipper Jones — the 45th homer of his career against the Mets — two from Alex Gonzalez and one from the rookie Freddie Freeman.

In the second game, Braves starter Jair Jurrjens pitched so well that Collins did not even feel the need to yell at his team after the game.

? Jurrjens allowed only two hits through seven innings, one of them a leadoff double by Daniel Murphy in the sixth inning with the Mets trailing, 3-0. Inexplicably, Murphy tried to steal third base and was thrown out, which earned him a lecture from Collins in the dugout runway.

?“It was an awful play,” Murphy said. “There was nothing that could have been going through my mind that could have justified that.”

?After the first game, Collins, who held a team meeting Wednesday that has been followed by four straight losses, said he remained confident that the Mets would rebound.

“I can tell you, we’re going to break out, and when we do we’re going to win a lot of baseball games,” he said.

?But for now, the Mets are tied with the Seattle Mariners with the most losses in baseball. For a team that needed a fast start, it is a perfectly awful way to begin.