NEW YORK -- Had other factors been different, the news that Noah Syndergaard will not be back until at least August could have rocked the Mets to their core. This is a team that took the field on Thursday with 17 players on their injured list, disrupting their best-laid plans while wreaking havoc on their 40-man roster.

It was also a team that stood alone in first place in the National League East, despite injuries to six members of its Opening Day lineup and two-fifths of its expected midsummer rotation. Syndergaard won’t be back any time soon as he deals with inflammation in his surgically repaired elbow. Nor will Carlos Carrasco, who tore his hamstring in Spring Training and still isn’t close to a return. So the work of keeping this team afloat has fallen to the other, healthy members of this rotation.

• Box score

To that end, Marcus Stroman and Joey Lucchesi combined for 9 2/3 effective innings, and the bullpen was near-perfect in a doubleheader sweep of the Rockies at Citi Field. Stroman delivered six scoreless innings to guide the Mets to a breezy 1-0 win in Game 1, before Lucchesi mostly held the Rockies in check in a 4-2 victory in Game 2.

“Obviously, we have to kind of carry the load until those guys get back,” Stroman said. “But I think we’re up to the task.”

The Mets certainly hope that to be true. They extended Stroman an $18.9 million qualifying offer this offseason largely because they believed he could provide stability to their rotation. Place him alongside Jacob deGrom, Carrasco, David Peterson and Taijuan Walker, the thinking went, and the Mets would be far better fortified against injuries.

Other depth pieces came aboard as well, including Lucchesi and Jordan Yamamoto, who battled for the fifth starter’s job this spring. But as much as the Mets had reason to be confident in that group, their margin for error has since shriveled given the extended absences of Carrasco and Syndergaard. The Mets have also needed to paper over injuries to deGrom, Walker and Yamamoto, magnifying the importance of the only three Mets starters to stay healthy all season: Stroman, Lucchesi and Peterson.

Like Stroman, Lucchesi has a reasonable track record of big league durability, topping out at 163 2/3 innings two years ago with the Padres. Unlike Stroman, Lucchesi does not have a long track record of success. As such, the Mets have treated him more carefully, sometimes preceding him with an opener and rarely letting him see a hitter more than twice in a game. So it was in Game 2, when the Mets removed Lucchesi almost immediately after he found trouble in the fourth.

Although reliever Drew Smith allowed an inherited run onto Lucchesi’s ledger, the Mets immediately struck back on José Peraza’s RBI single in the bottom of the fourth. Peraza had also homered in Game 2, delivering the go-ahead hits in both halves of the doubleheader sweep.

“We’re working hard,” Peraza said through an interpreter. “We’re staying united. We’re doing all the little things.”

In many ways, the fact that the Mets have already played three doubleheaders this season has been a blessing for their pitching staff, allowing them to rejigger their rotation and not lean too heavily on any one arm. That’s why manager Luis Rojas was able to remove both Stroman and Lucchesi when he did on Thursday, without fear of overtaxing his excellent bullpen.

It’s the type of strategy the Mets will pursue often this season as they look to keep their pitching staff humming despite its issues.

“I think every guy in this rotation -- obviously deGrom, myself, Taijuan, Lucchesi -- I think we take a ton of pride in going out there and competing,” Stroman said. “I think we truly feed off one another. … We’re all kind of in tune talking to each other in between starts, and we all want each other to go out there and be great, each and every time.

“I don’t think it’s any different now … since we have a lot of the guys on the [IL], I just feel like it puts a little bit more pressure on the guys who are in the rotation to kind of carry their load while those guys are out. I know once we get them back, we’ll roll.”

Mets pitchers will face a stiffer test this weekend, when the potent Braves come into town with eyes on wresting back first place. But the Mets will get Walker back from the injured list on Friday, and they have deGrom scheduled to pitch on Sunday night.

Things, for this group, could certainly be worse.

“That’s why I say almost every day that this is a group of brave men, because we’ve had some tough news, right?” Rojas said. “We’ve lost guys along the way in the last two weeks or even more, and the guys haven’t put their heads down or felt sorry for themselves. I think the guys have just gone, like, ‘Let’s go.’”