Tylor Megill won’t blame cold for start that put spotlight on his Mets issues

Considering the weather — bitterly cold and windy enough that winter jackets were worn all over Citi Field — Wednesday’s game might be an outlier for the rest of Tylor Megill’s season.

But the start itself reminded of the type of pitcher Megill has often been in his Mets career: difficult to hit and sometimes difficult to carry on a roster for a lengthy amount of time.

Megill was wild and nasty, in that order, through a strange 5-0 loss to the Marlins in which his first eight pitches were balls.

“The first inning was rough,” Megill acknowledged, but it was also a scoreless frame because he has that caliber of stuff.

After the pair of walks, Megill found the strike zone and struck out three of the following four batters, leaving the bases loaded but requiring 28 pitches to escape.

It is very much possible that Megill struggled to get a grip on the ball in the elements, but he said he felt fine and declined to blame the weather.

“Definitely kind of like a searching day today,” Megill said after he lasted just four innings in which he was charged with two runs, both unearned. “Mechanics didn’t really feel too well.”

As he explained it, his delivery had slowed down against the game’s first batters, leaving his arm out of sync and resulting in too many pitches sailing arm-side.

He sped up his delivery and corrected himself, but he was not consistent enough to efficiently sit down Marlins batters.

Megill pitched into the fifth, when two singles and a ground ball that Brett Baty airmailed to Francisco Lindor combined for an unearned run, and after 90 pitches he was finished.

He walked three, let up six singles and struck out seven, which helped him usually navigate out of danger.

“He just couldn’t give us length,” said manager Carlos Mendoza — who had to ask Max Kranick, Ryne Stanek, Huascar Brazobán, Edwin Díaz and Danny Young for the final five innings. “Stuff when he was in the zone was good.”

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Through three starts, Megill owns a 0.63 ERA and has averaged better than a strikeout per inning.

But he has totaled just 14 ¹/₃ innings, going as deep as 5 ¹/₃ innings in last week’s win over the Blue Jays.

Through 12 Mets games, only David Peterson has completed the sixth inning in a start.

The bullpen has been excellent over the first two weeks of the season, but the Mets and Megill are aware the starters would need to carry a greater load if the bullpen is going to survive the year.

“Obviously trying to go deeper into games, give the bullpen some rest,” Megill said.