SAN FRANCISCO — The Mets promised to prevent runs in 2026, but other than their Opening Day offensive outburst, they haven’t been able to score many of them.

This was a concern after the club dealt away Brandon Nimmo and Jeff McNeil, and let Pete Alonso walk down to Baltimore over the winter. But after the additions of Bo Bichette, Jorge Polanco and Luis Robert, the concerns were assuaged. The Mets were back in business with a long, versatile lineup.

At least until the second game of the season.

The lineup managed only five runs in a three-game series loss to the St. Louis Cardinals on the road this week, and has scored only once in the last 23 innings while going 0-for-11 with runners in scoring position in the third game at Busch Stadium. To finish the first road trip of the season, the Mets will play four games in one of the most pitcher-friendly ballparks in baseball, Oracle Park in San Francisco.

What could possibly go wrong?

“They’re good hitters,” manager Carlos Mendoza told the media in St. Louis on Wednesday. “Right now, for the last couple of games, we haven’t gotten it done. Yes, we’ve got to make some adjustments, but they’re good hitters.”

They are proven hitters, and baseball can be random, especially in this early part of the season when ballparks are still frozen and very few players are in midseason form. The Mets’ .253 BaBIP, the fifth-worst in baseball, would indicate they’ve had some bad luck and that a turnaround will come at some point. With Robbie Ray, a left-hander starting Thursday for the San Francisco Giants, and with three lefties the team leans on in the bullpen, the Mets will be able to change the lineup a bit. Mark Vientos and Tyrone Taylor are expected to be utilized more in this series.

Get one hot, and see if the hitting can become contagious.

“I still believe in what we have,” said shortstop Francisco Lindor. “Stearns and the front office did a good job of putting the team together, and we have a good team. [The Cardinals] executed their game plan, and I felt like [Tuesday], we executed our game plan… Overall, I think we’re a couple pitches away from getting the ball rolling on our side.”

As a team, the Mets are barely hitting .200, but they haven’t struck out an exorbitant amount of times. They’re still showing effort in extending at-bats and innings by working counts and taking pitches. They’ve also drawn a good amount of walks.

The problem is driving in those runners once they’ve walked. The Mets struggled to hit with runners in scoring position last season and took great pains to figure out why. They never did come up with one key factor. They’ve changed over the hitting staff since then, promoting Jeff Albert to the director of Major League hitting, and bringing in Troy Snitker as a hitting coach.

Mendoza cautioned against comparing the struggles of this year’s group to the issues they had last season. While that likely doesn’t do much for the fans desperate to see some offense, he isn’t wrong. It’s too early to make any sweeping generalizations, the numbers are still too random and the weather is still too cold for fireworks.

Should this trend linger throughout April and into May, then it might be time to panic, especially since the Mets will play three games in Los Angeles later this month, and three in Anaheim, where the ball tends to fly at all times of the year.

For now, they need to stick to what to they know to start scoring some runs.

“”We’ve just got to get back to what we do well, which is controlling the strike zone, getting good pitches to hit and doing damage,” Mendoza said. “Good hitters that, right now for a couple of games, they’re not getting it done.”