No team in baseball has scored fewer runs than the New York Mets. And no team in the National League has allowed more runs than the Washington Nationals.

Something will have to give starting Tuesday, when the skidding Mets host Washington in the opener of a three-game series between the longtime National League East rivals.

Clay Holmes (2-2, 2.10 ERA) is slated to start for the Mets against Zack Littell (0-3, 7.56) in a battle of right-handers.

Both teams were off Monday after concluding a three-game series Sunday. The Mets continued slumping as they were swept in a doubleheader by the visiting Colorado Rockies, who won the opener 3-1 before recording a 3-0 victory in the nightcap. The Nationals recorded a series win by edging the host Chicago White Sox 2-1 in 10 innings.

The wins by the Rockies completed a three-game sweep of the Mets and dropped them to 2-15 since April 8, the worst 17-game stretch for the club since New York went 2-15 from Aug. 28 through the second game of a doubleheader on Sept. 13, 2004.

The Mets are 9-19 overall, tied with the division rival Philadelphia Phillies for MLB’s worst record entering Monday. The 28-game start is tied for the worst in franchise history, while New York’s 92 runs are the sixth fewest through 28 games and its fewest since the 1981 team that had 88 runs while starting 8-19-1.

Offense may remain hard to come by for the Mets, who will be without Francisco Lindor and Jorge Polanco — their Opening Day leadoff and cleanup batters, respectively — indefinitely. Lindor is out with a strained left calf, while Polanco is battling left Achilles and right wrist ailments.

“We’ve got to continue to go through it and find ways to get the guys going,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said. “There’s no other way to put it. I can sit here and tell you guys a lot, but at the end of the day, we’ve got to go out and do it.”

The series against the White Sox indicated the Nationals might be in the process of figuring out their pitching issues. Although Washington has given up the second-most runs in the majors entering Monday (171, three behind the Houston Astros’ 174), the Nationals surrendered just nine runs against the White Sox despite going to extra innings in each of the last two games.

That’s the second fewest Washington has allowed in a three-game span this season, behind the eight runs it gave up while taking two of three from the Chicago Cubs and the Phillies from March 29-31.

Two of the White Sox’s four runs over the last two games came in extra innings, when the automatic runner is placed at second.

In addition, the win and save Sunday were recorded by Richard Lovelady, who began the season with the Mets, and Paxton Schultz, who was recalled from Triple-A Rochester prior to the series finale.

“This team works, they get after it,” Nationals manager Blake Butera said. “We’ve made some mistakes, no doubt, along the way. But the one thing I couldn’t be more proud (of) is just the way these guys have worked every single day.”

Holmes didn’t factor into the decision in his most recent start last Wednesday, when he allowed two runs over seven innings in the Mets’ 3-2 win over the Minnesota Twins. Littell took the loss Wednesday after giving up eight runs (six earned) over six innings as the Nationals fell to the Atlanta Braves 8-6.

Holmes is 1-1 with a 1.76 ERA and one save in six career games (one start) against the Nationals. Littell is 0-1 with a 1.38 ERA in seven games (one start) against the Mets.

–Field Level Media

Dylan Mingo, a top-10 recruit in the Class of 2026 who decommitted from North Carolina after its coaching change, will play for Baylor next season.

Mingo joins his brother Kayden Mingo, a fellow guard who transferred from Penn State to Baylor earlier this month.

Dylan Mingo committed to the Tar Heels in February while the program was still led by Hubert Davis. North Carolina fired the head coach after the team’s first-round NCAA Tournament loss to 11th-seeded VCU, in which the Tar Heels squandered a 19-point lead.

The younger Mingo — a combo guard ranked No. 6 overall in his class by the 247Sports Composite — decommitted earlier this month after North Carolina hired ex-Denver Nuggets head coach Michael Malone.

Mingo averaged 23.8 points, 6.5 rebounds and 6.8 assists on his way to earning MVP recognition at the NBA Top 100 Camp last summer, according to ESPN.

“Playing with my brother Kayden is a big plus. It is a blessing to play with him again,” he told ESPN in part.

Kayden Mingo, a top-40 recruit in the 2025 class, had a standout freshman campaign at Penn State. He averaged 13.7 points, 4.3 assists, 3.5 rebounds and a Big Ten-best 2.1 steals per game in 28 appearances, all starts.

–Field Level Media

The Knicks will try to ride a tone-setting first quarter from Game 4 of their Eastern Conference first-round series against the Atlanta Hawks into Game 5 on Tuesday in New York.

The Knicks responded to consecutive one-point losses by securing a seven-point lead after the end of the first quarter in Game 4. They doubled the advantage by halftime and extended the lead to as many as 24 points en route to a 114-98 victory on Saturday.

The best-of-seven series is tied at two wins apiece.

“You can’t be satisfied with this performance,” Josh Hart said after his team regained home-court advantage in the series. “You can’t go into Game 5 thinking we had a great game, and they’re just going to lay down, ‘cause they’re not.

“They’re going to come out with a sense of urgency, a sense of physicality that they probably haven’t shown yet. We’ve got to be ready to weather that storm and have our own physicality.”

Atlanta head coach Quin Snyder credited New York’s defensive intensity — and the play of Hart — for contributing to his team’s stumble out of the gate.

“More than anything, the start of the game, their physicality bothered us,” Snyder said.

It’s safe to say Karl-Anthony Towns and OG Anunoby bothered the Hawks as well.

Towns recorded his first postseason triple-double after finishing with 20 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists. He is the fourth player in franchise history to record a triple-double in a playoff game, joining Hall of Famers Walt Frazier and Dick McGuire as well as Hart.

“I thought we did a great job coming out with more tenacity. More desperation I think is the proper word,” Towns said.

Anunoby finished with 22 points while making 9 of 16 shots from the floor for the second straight game. He also collected 10 rebounds and All-Star guard Jalen Brunson had 19 points to continue his team’s strong play since the fourth quarter of Game 3.

“The way we’ve been able to (play on both sides of the ball) these past five quarters is how we’ve got to play,” Brunson said.

New York scored 21 points off 19 turnovers in Game 4, much to the chagrin of Atlanta’s CJ McCollum.

“They played better than us. They played harder than us,” said McCollum, who was limited to just 17 points after averaging 27.0 over the first three games.

“We would have liked to go up 3-1, but if you would have told us we’d be 2-2 going back to the Garden, life’s not so bad.”

Jalen Johnson made just 4 of 12 shots to finish with 14 points in Game 4. He averaged 21.3 points over the previous three games.

Like Johnson, the rest of the Hawks struggled to find their range. They shot 41.0% from the floor and 24.4% from 3-point range.

The Hawks, who rely heavily on the transition game, didn’t record a fastbreak point until the fourth quarter in Game 4.

“There’s no transition when you’re turning the ball over and bringing it up out of the net,” Snyder said.

–Field Level Media