Sunday’s 9-0 loss to the Rays was a rock-bottom point of the weekend for the Mets, who lost all three games against Tampa Bay (39-32) by a combined 24-9 margin, but National League-leading New York (45-27) is not dwelling on its season-first sweep as it prepares for this week’s series at the Atlanta Braves.

“You hate to get swept here at home, but you’ve got to move on,” said Carlos Mendoza. “You’ve got to turn the page. We’ve got an off day. And then we’ve got a stretch here where we’re playing the Braves, we’re playing the (Philadelphia) Phillies, we’ve got the Braves again.

“So, again, it’s 162 (games) — you’re going to go through stretches where this is going to happen. Obviously, we’ve got to play better. We didn’t execute, we didn’t play clean baseball and they made us pay. So, like I said, we’ve got to turn the page and start — be ready to go Tuesday.”

The sweep marks just the second time this season where the Mets have lost three straight games, with the first and only other instance coming May 18-20 at the Yankees (one) and Boston Red Sox (two).

“I think there are things you take away from it,” said Brandon Nimmo, whose first-inning single was the first of only five hits by the Mets in Sunday’s shutout. “You try and take it for a learning moment. People will look at this series and see if there’s a recipe on how to beat us. And so, I definitely think there’s something to learn from it.

“But at the same time, you try and not make it bigger than it is. We’ve been very good to this point, so you try and build on that. But there’s always something to learn, so we will go ahead and look at those small things and learn from that and take ’em into the Atlanta series.”

New York enters Atlanta with the Braves (31-39) under .500 since May 22 and fresh off Sunday’s 10-1 loss to the MLB-worst Colorado Rockies (14-57).

“We know, when you look at that team on paper, that’s a really good team,” Mendoza said. “Obviously, they have some struggles. And then the three guys that we’re facing, they’re elite pitchers. And then you look at their lineup, they’re healthy.

“So, yeah — from the beginning, before the year started, we knew there were some good teams, really good teams in our division and the National League overall and here we are. We’ve got to get ready and the next 10 days are — we’ve got to play well.”

After the 7:15 p.m. starts on SNY across Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in Atlanta, the Mets’ three-game series at the Phillies (42-29) opens Friday.

“Just take it one day at a time,” Nimmo said. “The Braves are a very good team — I don’t care what their record says — very good team that can play very good baseball, pitch very well, hit very well, especially in their home ballpark, so we’re going to be going in there expecting a bulldog fight, be ready for Game 1.

“Same thing with Philadelphia — we know they’re an extremely talented team, very, very good, very dangerous at home, great pitching staff. So, tough stretch coming up and we’re just going to have to take it one game at a time.”

Mets right-hander Griffin Canning allowed a season-high six runs and five walks in Sunday’s 9-0 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays.

While the Rays (39-32) made timely plays, Canning’s 50 strikes on 89 pitches over 4.1 IP put New York (45-27) in a tough spot.

“You’ve got to give them credit,” Mendoza said of Tampa Bay, which went on the road and won all three games against the team with the National League’s best record and gave the Mets their season-first sweep. “But at the same time, we’re giving them too many free passes and we gave them extra outs — and they’re going to make you pay.

“That’s a team that I’ve been saying it — they’re going to put the ball in play, they play the small ball and today was a perfect example. Walks — they get bunt down, we don’t make a play. Before you know it, we’re down three. So, yeah, we just didn’t play well.”

Canning, who is 6-3 in 14 starts with a 3.80 ERA and 1.40 WHIP in 68.2 IP, was direct about the struggles.

“Just falling behind guys, walking guys,” Canning said. “Probably shying away from contact a little too much, but it’s a good lineup with a hot team right now.

“Just can’t give them free bases.”

Mendoza delved deeper into Canning’s issues.

“Ability to throw strikes,” Mendoza said. “The walks, we saw it again today — a lot of arm-side misses with the breaking ball, the fastball, then he gets behind and, when he comes in, they’re going to make him pay. So I think it’s just strike-throwing ability.

“When he’s been on … he’s giving us a chance and giving us solid outings, he’s on the attack and staying on the attack with all of his pitches. And I feel like, right now — we saw it today — like I said, a lot of arm-side (misses), and the walks are hurting him.”

While Canning has been on a downward trend over the totality of his past five starts, he did just throw six scoreless innings of three-hit ball June 4 at the Los Angeles Dodgers in a 6-1 win — not by coincidence, he walked only one batter while striking out seven and scattering three hits.

“I’ve just go to get back to trusting my stuff in the zone,” Canning said. “My changeup felt pretty good (Sunday). But yeah, just getting back to what makes me good and just trusting it.”

Rafael Devers’ 2025 season has been defined by dominance at the plate and an extended dispute with the Boston Red Sox over his fielding position. Now, it will also be known for a blockbuster trade.

The San Francisco Giants have acquired Devers in a trade that will send pitchers Jordan Hicks, Kyle Harrison and more back to Boston, according to Fansided’s Robert Murray and CBS Sports’ Julian McWilliams.

The Giants have reportedly agreed to take on all of Devers’ current contract, which will pay him $254.5 million over the next eight seasons after this one. Currently slotted as a designated hitter, Devers was enjoying one of the best seasons of his career at the plate, hitting .271/.400/.494 and leading the league in walks with 55.

Devers did not demand a trade, according to Chris Cotillo of MassLive.

The move ends a nine-season tenure in Boston for Devers, who was part of the club’s 2018 World Series team and earned three All-Star nods. He signed the largest contract in franchise history in 2023 at $313.5 million and was the last remaining member of that 2018 team.

Now he is on the way out, and not exactly under the happiest circumstances.

Rafael Devers had major issues with Red Sox front office

The issues began when the Red Sox signed former Houston Astros third baseman Alex Bregman to a three-year, $120 million contract in free agency.

Before 2025, Devers spent his entire career at third base. Typically, a player who has starred for an organization for years and is under contract for many more years would be the one who gets to keep his position, but the uncomfortable truth was that Bregman, a Gold Glover, is far better at playing third base than Devers, who rarely graded as a positive at the hot corner in the best of times.

Devers made very clear he was not happy with being asked to cede his position, but eventually conceded in spring training that he would be fine serving as Boston’s DH. That seemed to be the end of it, until Red Sox first baseman Triston Casas ruptured his patellar tendon in May.

There was some thought that Devers could make the common transition from third base to first base to help his team cover a position where they had few other palatable options. The Boston front office seemed to think so, approaching Devers about a position change many observers assumed was inevitable, even without Bregman.

Devers responded by going scorched earth, questioning the wisdom of the move with reporters, accusing the team of lying to him and saying he didn’t understand the decisions general manager Craig Breslow was making. The situation got bad enough that team owner John Henry flew out to Kansas City to meet with Devers on the road, where it was agreed Devers would stay at DH.

We now know that wasn’t the end of it. On a related note, the Giants are scheduled to face the Red Sox in a series next weekend.

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Rafael Devers still won’t play third base for the Giants

You would assume a player disgruntled over a position change would be moving back to his preferred position after a trade, but the punchline here is that Devers won’t be playing third base for the Giants either.

The Giants have an even better third baseman in five-time Gold Glover Matt Chapman, who signed a six-year, $151 million extension with San Francisco last year. Barring another move, the pair will be teammates for at least another half-decade.

Chapman is currently on the injured list with right hand inflammation and is reportedly due back in the first half, but it remains to be seen if Devers even makes the move back to third in the short term. He stayed at DH when Bregman hit the IL in Boston.

Despite that, the New York Post’s Jon Heyman reports Devers is happy with the move. This whole thing might have been about more than a position change.

Giants get much-needed bat with Rafael Devers

Boston’s discomfort will be the Giants’ gain. Currently in second place in the NL West at 41-30, the Giants boast one of the best pitching staffs in baseball — and a mediocre offense.

The Giants entered Sunday ranking 20th in MLB by wRC+, which evaluates offensive contributions while correcting for the pitcher-friendly Oracle Park.

Devers could either stay the course at designated hitter or finally give first base a try, but either way he gives the Giants a strong middle-of-the-order bat that can slot in among Chapman, Willy Adames, Jung Hoo Lee and Mike Yastrzemski. It’s worth wondering how Devers’ offensive profile will work at Oracle Park, which famously suppresses left-handed hitters like him, but talents like him are rarely available like this.

Another franchise talent leaves Boston

Whatever the circumstances of Devers’ exit, it can’t be ignored that another franchise talent is exiting the Red Sox.

In fact, the NL West is now a constellation of former Red Sox stars. The Giants have Devers. The Los Angeles Dodgers have Mookie Betts, whom the Red Sox traded in 2020 in a now-infamous deal spurred by their refusal to pay him. The San Diego Padres have Xander Bogaerts, who left in free agency for an 11-year, $280 million deal two winters ago. Even the Arizona Diamondbacks have starting pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez.

There’s also Chris Sale, who won a Cy Young Award with the Atlanta Braves last year.

The post-Red Sox careers of those players have been varied, but it’s a franchise-defining trend right now. Their roster has mostly turned over from even their last playoff team in 2021, largely because the team has made a conscious decision not to pay its biggest names.

Boston bet big on winning again this season with the Bregman deal and the trade for starting pitcher Garrett Crochet, but that bet is now enormously contingent on its young prospects like Marcelo Mayer and Roman Anthony turning into stars, quickly.

Rafael Devers’ 2025 season has been defined by dominance at the plate and an extended dispute with the Boston Red Sox over his fielding position. Now, it will also be known for a blockbuster trade.

The San Francisco Giants have acquired Devers in a trade that will send pitchers Jordan Hicks, Kyle Harrison and more back to Boston, according to Fansided’s Robert Murray and CBS Sports’ Julian McWilliams.

The Giants have reportedly agreed to take on all of Devers’ current contract, which will pay him $254.5 million over the next eight seasons after this one. Currently slotted as a designated hitter, Devers was enjoying one of the best seasons of his career at the plate, hitting .271/.400/.494 and leading the league in walks with 55.

Devers did not demand a trade, according to Chris Cotillo of MassLive.

The move ends a nine-season tenure in Boston for Devers, who was part of the club’s 2018 World Series team and earned three All-Star nods. He signed the largest contract in franchise history in 2023 at $313.5 million and was the last remaining member of that 2018 team.

Now he is on the way out, and not exactly under the happiest circumstances.

Rafael Devers had major issues with Red Sox front office

The issues began when the Red Sox signed former Houston Astros third baseman Alex Bregman to a three-year, $120 million contract in free agency.

Before 2025, Devers spent his entire career at third base. Typically, a player who has starred for an organization for years and is under contract for many more years would be the one who gets to keep his position, but the uncomfortable truth was that Bregman, a Gold Glover, is far better at playing third base than Devers, who rarely graded as a positive at the hot corner in the best of times.

Devers made very clear he was not happy with being asked to cede his position, but eventually conceded in spring training that he would be fine serving as Boston’s DH. That seemed to be the end of it, until Red Sox first baseman Triston Casas ruptured his patellar tendon in May.

There was some thought that Devers could make the common transition from third base to first base to help his team cover a position where they had few other palatable options. The Boston front office seemed to think so, approaching Devers about a position change many observers assumed was inevitable, even without Bregman.

Devers responded by going scorched earth, questioning the wisdom of the move with reporters, accusing the team of lying to him and saying he didn’t understand the decisions general manager Craig Breslow was making. The situation got bad enough that team owner John Henry flew out to Kansas City to meet with Devers on the road, where it was agreed Devers would stay at DH.

We now know that wasn’t the end of it. On a related note, the Giants are scheduled to face the Red Sox in a series next weekend.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Rafael Devers still won’t play third base for the Giants

You would assume a player disgruntled over a position change would be moving back to his preferred position after a trade, but the punchline here is that Devers won’t be playing third base for the Giants either.

The Giants have an even better third baseman in five-time Gold Glover Matt Chapman, who signed a six-year, $151 million extension with San Francisco last year. Barring another move, the pair will be teammates for at least another half-decade.

Chapman is currently on the injured list with right hand inflammation and is reportedly due back in the first half, but it remains to be seen if Devers even makes the move back to third in the short term. He stayed at DH when Bregman hit the IL in Boston.

Despite that, the New York Post’s Jon Heyman reports Devers is happy with the move. This whole thing might have been about more than a position change.

Giants get much-needed bat with Rafael Devers

Boston’s discomfort will be the Giants’ gain. Currently in second place in the NL West at 41-30, the Giants boast one of the best pitching staffs in baseball — and a mediocre offense.

The Giants entered Sunday ranking 20th in MLB by wRC+, which evaluates offensive contributions while correcting for the pitcher-friendly Oracle Park.

Devers could either stay the course at designated hitter or finally give first base a try, but either way he gives the Giants a strong middle-of-the-order bat that can slot in among Chapman, Willy Adames, Jung Hoo Lee and Mike Yastrzemski. It’s worth wondering how Devers’ offensive profile will work at Oracle Park, which famously suppresses left-handed hitters like him, but talents like him are rarely available like this.

Another franchise talent leaves Boston

Whatever the circumstances of Devers’ exit, it can’t be ignored that another franchise talent is exiting the Red Sox.

In fact, the NL West is now a constellation of former Red Sox stars. The Giants have Devers. The Los Angeles Dodgers have Mookie Betts, whom the Red Sox traded in 2020 in a now-infamous deal spurred by their refusal to pay him. The San Diego Padres have Xander Bogaerts, who left in free agency for an 11-year, $280 million deal two winters ago. Even the Arizona Diamondbacks have starting pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez.

There’s also Chris Sale, who won a Cy Young Award with the Atlanta Braves last year.

The post-Red Sox careers of those players have been varied, but it’s a franchise-defining trend right now. Their roster has mostly turned over from even their last playoff team in 2021, largely because the team has made a conscious decision not to pay its biggest names.

Boston bet big on winning again this season with the Bregman deal and the trade for starting pitcher Garrett Crochet, but that bet is now enormously contingent on its young prospects like Marcelo Mayer and Roman Anthony turning into stars, quickly.

Brett Baty is day-to-day with right groin tightness, Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said after New York’s third baseman left with right groin tightness in the seventh inning of Sunday’s 9-0 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays.

“I was going for a foul ball that was flared towards the tarp and I kind of, like, stepped over with my left — kind of backwards — and I just felt just a little tightness in my right groin,” Baty said.

Ronny Mauricio replaced the seventh-batting Baty with a pinch-hit single to lead off the bottom of the seventh inning.

The Mets have Monday off before a three-game series at the Atlanta Braves starts with Tuesday’s 7:15 p.m. opener on SNY.

“We’re not doing any X-rays or MRI as of right now,” Mendoza said. “… We’ll see where we’re at Tuesday, but that’s what I’ve got so far.”

Baty’s 0-for-2 performance followed a 1-for-4 effort in Saturday’s 8-4 loss to the Rays, which included his third-inning home run.

“I want to see how it feels (Monday) first,” he said. “I think what we’re going to do is just take it day by day because something like this has happened to me in the past, and I responded well to treatment and stuff, so we’re just going to see how it feels (Monday).”

The previous instance was two years ago, Baty said, while “trying to steal a base.”

“It was actually my other side, but it was a similar motion — stepping over and pushing off,” Baty said. “… And I responded well to treatment, so we’ll see how it feels (Monday).”

Through 54 games this season, Baty is slashing .219/.267/.419 with eight home runs and 24 RBI.

“It feels numb because I’ve been icing it,” Baty said. “But like I said, we’re just going to see how it feels (Monday) — take it day by day.”

OKLAHOMA CITY — Through the first seven and a half months of this NBA season, Alex Caruso had only topped 30 minutes in a game twice.

The first: a late-March meeting with the Los Angeles Clippers, when injuries to Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren pressed him into duty in the Thunder’s starting lineup. The second: Game 4 of the 2025 Western Conference finals, when the veteran super-sub skittered all over the court, guarding Anthony Edwards, Rudy Gobert and every Timberwolf in between in a hard-fought 128-126 win that drew Oklahoma City within one win of the 2025 NBA Finals.

Now that the Thunder are actually in the 2025 NBA Finals, though? Caruso has played 30-plus twice in four Finals games — the last two, now that you mention it.

As the philosopher once said, “There are no coincidences.”

That philosopher’s name? Alex Caruso.

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Caruso cracking 30 minutes just twice in his first 72 appearances this regular and postseason was emblematic of the Thunder’s big-picture plan of attack for a player they’d targeted in a key trade last summer to be the missing piece of a hoped-for championship puzzle … but also a player whose now-legendary relentlessness had led to multiple injuries that cost him significant time over the course of his seven-year NBA career.

“Yeah, I mean, it’s a double-edged sword,” Caruso said after Oklahoma City’s Game 2 win. “Some of that is I play a pretty erratic style regardless if it’s Game 1 [of the season] or if it’s Game 2 of the Finals. I just only have one gear — I don’t know how to play at 75%. Some of that was keeping me out of my own way, out of harm’s way. I don’t do a good job of that on my own.”

Some of it, though, came down to Oklahoma City being friggin’ awesome, with a ton of dudes capable of contributing when given the chance.

“We won 68 games in the regular season,” Caruso said after Game 2.” We had a 12-, 13-man rotation through the year, depending on who was hurt, different teams we played. That just comes with the nature of having a really good, deep team.”

The Finals have a way of winnowing down a team’s depth, though — of erasing the opportunities to see what a precocious rookie might be able to provide you, of rendering more limited contributors particularly vulnerable and thus unviable, of paring a team down to its most essential elements.

“It’s the ultimate effort, endeavor, whatever you want to call it,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said after Game 4. “I mean, it’s long. It’s arduous. But it’s the greatest opportunity going. … It’s really hard, and it’s supposed to be hard.”

It’s a crucible: a 24/7 stress test that spotlights and punishes weakness, and that rewards versatility and skill, a game without holes, and an iron constitution.

In other words: It’s a series built for Caruso, and that Caruso is built for.

“Yeah, you know, I’m a complete basketball player,” he said Sunday. “There’s a lot of things that I do really, really good.”

Caruso showcased the diversity of his skill set in Game 4. Everybody knows, at this point, that he’s one of the best defenders on the planet, equally adept at chasing jitterbug guards around screens and aggressively bodying up Nikola Jokić in the post. What many might not have been aware of, though, was that he’s also a more-than-capable initiator of Oklahoma City’s offense, with more touches and time of possession than any Thunderer besides Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams in Game 4, and with more passes thrown than even OKC’s two on-ball All-Stars.

Or that, when the moment calls for it, he’s got enough shake to his handle to be able to get from Point A to Point B off the bounce and make something happen once he gets there:

“Over my career, my abilities have gotten better through some work ethic and a little bit of confidence and understanding the moment and having success in the moment,” Caruso said after Game 4. “… This series — this playoffs, really — teams are forcing me to try and score the ball. That’s something that I’ve been working on for the last three, four years of my offseason. It’s been long offseasons not in the playoffs, so I’ve had a lot of time to work and prepare.”

That preparation, combined with countless catch-and-shoot reps that have turned him into a 43.2% marksman from 3-point range in this postseason, makes Caruso a legitimate complementary offensive threat playing off the likes of Gilgeous-Alexander, Williams and Chet Holmgren. And that, combined with his ability to defend all across the positional spectrum — and his propensity for wreaking havoc while doing so, in the form of steals, deflections, blocked shots and blown-up possessions — makes him an exceptionally additive player in just about any context you could conjure.

“He is a gamer — you plug him in anywhere, any lineup, feels like any group, he makes a difference,” Gilgeous-Alexander said Sunday. “Makes everyone else around him better. He is always talking. He always knows where we’re supposed to be, where the other team is supposed to be. He has instincts that are special. I don’t think you can teach things like that. He just knows where the ball is going, where a rebound is bouncing to, how to get a deflection, timely steals.”

That all-around difference was palpable late in Game 4. Caruso contributed a little bit of everything — strong shot contests, aggressive rebounding on both ends, smart cuts, timely help rotations, excellent on-ball defense — as part of the small-ball defensive look Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton said “got us stagnant there,” and helped set the table for the comeback effort that got OKC even in the best-of-seven series:

“He has a championship ring for a reason,” Gilgeous-Alexander said after Game 4. “It’s no coincidence. He knows what it takes. He put the work in. He’s proving it every night.”

Caruso has proven plenty for Oklahoma City, both over the course of the season and in this series, where he has the best on-court/off-court splits of any Thunder rotation regular besides Holmgren. In a gotta-have-it Game 4, Oklahoma City outscored Indiana by 14 points in Caruso’s 30 minutes; through four games, 17 of 26 Thunder lineups that have outscored the Pacers have included Caruso.

“He just has amazing feel for the game and is an insane competitor,” Gilgeous-Alexander said Sunday. “I think you add those two things together, and no matter where you drop him in the world, any basketball game, he is going to make a difference.”

The question facing Daigneault and his coaching staff heading into Game 5 of a 2-2 series: Could Caruso make an even bigger difference in even bigger minutes? Like … for example … starter’s minutes?

Daigneault’s proven very willing to tinker with his starting lineup, shifting away from a more traditional two-big look with Isaiah Hartenstein alongside Holmgren before the series in favor of moving Cason Wallace into the first five to better match speed on the perimeter with Haliburton, Andrew Nembhard and Indiana’s high-octane ball- and player-movement game. Daigneault then shifted back to the double-big unit for Game 4, as part of a reorientation of Oklahoma City’s rotation and substitution pattern aimed partly at counteracting the Pacers’ defensive strategy on Gilgeous-Alexander, thus ensuring the MVP had a bit more gas in the tank come crunch time than he had in Game 3. (Mission accomplished.)

“Every game is different,” Daigneault said Sunday. “Like, we’ve done it after wins, after losses, throughout these series — we move things around pretty quickly to try to stay unpredictable and also try to scrape for every advantage we can in what turn out to be close games.”

Few players in the league are better equipped to scrape out those advantages than Caruso, and with the Finals knotted up and a title just two wins away, Daigneault sounded Sunday like a coach prepared to lean even harder in his direction.

“I think this is the time you’ve got to do everything you can to try to win the games and pull out all the stops. That’s been the mentality,” he said. “He’s been great. Extra rest in the Finals for all the players is a consideration, and you get a lot of rest between games. There’s advantages and disadvantages. But one of the advantages is for everybody to recover and be as fresh as possible going into the game.”

With an extra day of rest between Games 4 and 5, and with a shot at a second date with the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy getting closer by the possession, Caruso plans to be ready to put his fingerprints on the game, no matter how many minutes Daigneault needs him to play come Monday night in Bricktown.

“These are the games you are judged on … this is the time of year that I live for,” Caruso said Sunday. “This is the time of the year where games matter, stakes are high, wins and losses are more important. So being prepared for this is important.”