Buck Showalter turned to the oldest trick in a manager’s playbook in an attempt to extract results from his under performing team.

After the Mets lost for a seventh straight game on Friday, Showalter held a closed-door meeting, during which he stated the obvious: the team needed to play better.

According to a person who was in the room, players were urged to “dig down deep” and find “another level of competitiveness.”

Maybe Showalter’s words resonated on Saturday or maybe the Mets were just fortunate enough to have Kodai Senga pitching and due for a rebound after the clunker he produced in his last start.

This one adhered to the offseason blueprint: Senga rolled into the late innings without much resistance and the bullpen held, allowing the Mets to snap their longest losing streak in four years with a 5-1 victory over the Pirates at PNC Park.

Senga fired a two-hitter over seven innings, allowing one unearned run. The right-hander struck out six and walked four, helping the Mets to exhale after Justin Verlander and Tylor Megill gave them short, ineffective performances Thursday and Friday. 

The Atlanta Braves came back against the New York Mets for the third time in the series, completing a dramatic sweep against the NL East rival as the Braves walked it off, 13-10, in ten innings. 

As Atlanta improves to 38-24, the Mets drop their sixth straight game and continue their free-fall in the NL East standings.

An Ozzie Albies three-run home run sealed the deal after an Orlando Arcia homer in the bottom of the ninth was enough to force extra innings.

The rivalry continues to get more and more one-sided. After seeing several fans and media members react poorly to the first two games of the series, it will be interesting to see the fallout from the completed sweep. 

On the Mets broadcast, the postgame show brought up phrases that you never want to hear as a fan like “there’s a lot of season left,’ or “if things don’t turn up, changes need to be made.” 

To make matters worse for the Mets, this is the first time in their history that they have lost 3 consecutive games games when they held a 3-run lead. They’ve been playing baseball since 1962.

Without Aaron Judge, thriving is probably out of the question. But if the Yankees can survive until their captain returns, they would be thrilled.

In the Yankees’ first day of games since their best player was placed on the injured list, they survived by digging a hole and climbing out.

After fighting back but falling in a 6-5 matinee loss to the White Sox on Thursday, the Yankees responded by shutting down Chicago in a 3-0 victory to salvage a split of the day.

A sparser-than-usual Bronx crowd of an announced 40,659 watched the Yankees (37-27) play through an air-quality crisis that postponed Wednesday’s game.

The Yankees dropped a series to the White Sox (28-36) in part because a couple of veteran pitchers in Game 1 — Luis Severino and Michael King — allowed a combined four home runs. 

The final one was a two-run blast from Eloy Jimenez that gave the White Sox a seventh-inning lead they would not cough up.