The Mets started a critical stretch of games Friday night the same way their benches-clearing clash against the Rockies ended: with a dud.

There was a lot of talking and not much action, the same as provided by the Mets’ bats in a 5-1 loss to the Rockies at Citi Field.

Jacob deGrom tossed six innings of two-run baseball and struck out 10, but his offense and bullpen could not hold up their end of the bargain. Coming off of back-to-back wins, the Mets (30-33) began a stretch of 28 straight games against teams with above-.500 records with a whimper.

“The goal is to win baseball games and when we don’t, everybody’s frustrated,” deGrom said. “Still a lot of baseball left and hopefully we can start stringing those [wins] together where it’s five or six and go from there. But it’s kind of [been] step forward, step back.”

Tempers flared in the eighth inning, when Drew Gagnon entered facing a 2-1 deficit and gave up a pair of home runs that made it 5-1 before hitting Ian Desmond on the back with a 2-1 fastball. Desmond did not appreciate the plunking and exchanged words with Gagnon as the benches and bullpens cleared.

“Complete accident,” Gagnon said. “I see where they’re coming from, but I wasn’t throwing strikes all day.”

Players and coaches milled around the infield and the Rockies had started back to their dugout before coming out for a second round of words. No punches were thrown.

The same could be said for the Mets’ offense, which mustered just four hits off Rockies starter Antonio Senzatela, who entered with a 5.33 ERA. Michael Conforto’s solo home run in the sixth inning was the only blip on the radar.

“The story was we didn’t score runs for [deGrom],” manager Mickey Callaway said.

Making his first start since begrudgingly exiting with a hip cramp in the seventh inning last Saturday at Arizona, deGrom needed 112 pitches to get through six innings, but he gave the Mets a good chance to win. He allowed only two runs on six hits and a walk while recording his third double-digit strikeout game of the year.

“He was excellent,” Callaway said. “Fastball was electric. He left a couple of sliders up and they hit it hard, but other than that, he was electric.”

Wilson Ramos was catching deGrom for the first time in four starts after Tomas Nido had handled the past three. DeGrom owned a 1.17 ERA in six starts caught by Nido, and lowered his ERA with Ramos catching from 5.33 to 4.91.

The Rockies got to deGrom on Raimel Tapia’s RBI double in the third inning and made it 2-0 on three singles by David Dahl, former Met Daniel Murphy and Desmond in the fourth. The only other way they frustrated deGrom was by getting his pitch count up by fouling off pitches.

“Made a couple mistakes in the middle with some breaking pitches. Other than that, I felt like I was decent out there,” deGrom said. “Couple pitches I wish I could have back with runners on.”

Robert Gsellman struck out the side in the seventh before Gagnon wiped out the Mets’ chances for a comeback in the eighth, getting their big month off on the wrong foot.

“Nobody’s been frustrated, so I don’t think this group of guys you have to really worry about that,” Callaway said. “They’re focused on the right things, they come to play every day. It hasn’t even crept into my mind that that might be an issue.”