NEW YORK — The trades were flying on Monday night with multiple teams completing deals for starting pitchers while the Twins and New York Mets played on in Queens.

Monday’s game — a 15-2 blowout loss to the Mets at Citi Field — served as a good example of why the Twins are on the hunt for pitching ahead of Tuesday evening’s trade deadline.

Simeon Woods Richardson, who himself has twice been traded at the deadline, has given the Twins all they could have asked for since being called up in April. But, to play deep into October as the Twins hope to do, bolstering their rotation would go a long way.

After three scoreless innings to begin Monday’s game, the Mets jumped all over Woods Richardson in the fourth with the first seven batters reaching base.

Minnesota Twins players talk on the pitcher’s mound during the fourth inning of a baseball game against the New York Mets, Monday, July 29, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)

It started with a Pete Alonso home run. A mix of walks and hits followed before Brandon Nimmo’s sacrifice fly ended Woods Richardson’s night. At that point, five runs had scored. One more run would score in the inning, which was also charged to the starter.

At just 3 1/3 innings, it was Woods Richardson’s shortest start of the season. The six runs he gave up represented a season high.

By the time he departed, the Twins were deep in a hole from which they would never recover.

The Twins gave up another five runs in the sixth inning — all charged to Josh Staumont — and the Mets scored four off Brock Stewart in the eighth, leading to outfielder Matt Wallner’s mound debut.

Though Wallner was a pitcher in college and has one of the strongest outfield arms in the game, he was lobbing pitches in around 40 mph to finish off the final 1 1/3 innings.

It was a forgettable loss for the Twins, despite a start in which the first two Twins batters collected hits, producing the first run. Mets starter Jose Quintana then threw six scoreless innings after that.

That was the only run the Twins would score until the ninth, when Ryan Jeffers, who was robbed of a home run in the seventh inning, hit his team-leading 15th home run.

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