NEW YORK -- Every good comeback story has roadblocks, and resurgent Brewers right-hander Julio Teheran finally ran into one at full speed in a 7-2 loss to the Mets at Citi Field on Tuesday night.

After going nine-up, nine-down to start the night, briefly lowering his ERA to a sparkling 1.41 in his seventh Brewers start, Teheran served up four home runs in the process of recording the final eight outs of one of the roughest starts of his career. Only once in 242 prior starts over 12 Major League seasons had Teheran served up four homers, and that was more than eight years ago.  

“It was a tough day, a different day,” Teheran said. “I wasn’t expecting to be perfect.”

For Teheran, those three power-packed innings represented a divergence from what has been an inspired return to Major League Baseball after more than two years of injury and independent ball.

In his first six Brewers starts, Teheran surrendered six earned runs and three home runs in 35 1/3 innings.

On Tuesday, he surrendered seven earned runs and four homers in 5 2/3 innings.

“He's kind of reinvented himself a little bit, so I was interested to see what it was going to be like getting up there,” said Mets center fielder and leadoff hitter Brandon Nimmo, who homered twice in his first matchup with Teheran since 2019. “I thought we did a really good job, because it seems like nobody else has really touched him up yet.”

Nimmo and the Mets assaulted every aspect of Teheran’s arsenal. 

In the fourth inning, Nimmo connected with a down-and-in cutter, the pitch that has put Teheran back in command this season despite significantly lower velocity than he possessed during his heyday. Two batters later, Francisco Lindor homered off a sinker away.

In the fifth, Nimmo homered again off a changeup away, spoiling what Teheran called a perfectly executed pitch. It gave the Mets a 4-0 lead and marked the first time this season that Teheran was saddled with more than two runs.

And in a three-run sixth, Daniel Vogelbach chased Teheran from the game with another two-run home run off a fastball that was above the strike zone and away.

“After the first time through the lineup, they obviously made an adjustment,” said Teheran, who noticed Mets hitters diving for pitches on the outer half of home plate here, and sitting offspeed in fastball counts there. “I’ll make a couple of changes, probably, but you don’t want to change everything.”

Beyond denting Teheran's ERA -- it went from 1.53 going into the night to 2.85 by game’s end -- the result exposed two trends that have followed the Brewers this season.

One, they tend to not score for Teheran. Here are the Brewers’ runs scored in the seven games he’s started:

• Zero
• Four
• Zero
• One
• Five
• One
• Two

Two, the Brewers often don’t hit lefty starters. Tuesday’s opponent was David Peterson, who was demoted to the Minors May 16 after beginning the season 1-6 with an 8.08 ERA, and allowing at least four earned runs in each of his last five starts.

Peterson was not the first lefty whose callup coincided with a matchup against Milwaukee -- the Cardinals’ Matthew Liberatore and Reds prospect Andrew Abbott are others -- and indeed Peterson thrived after a shaky first inning. The Brewers loaded the bases with a one-out single followed by two walks, but Peterson recovered with Owen Miller’s double-play grounder, then pitched through the sixth without allowing a run.

Peterson was the 25th left-handed pitcher to start a game against Milwaukee this season; 19 of them have surrendered two or fewer runs, and 21 of them have surrendered three or fewer runs. The Brewers are 10-15 in those games, with losses in nine of the past 10. Their .618 OPS against left-handed starters is 30th of 30 teams.

“Julio has been doing a great job for us, and it sucks that we haven’t been able to give him any run support,” said Brian Anderson, whose two-run double in the eighth inning averted a shutout. “We have to get that offense going for him.”

What will it take to get the offense going against lefties?

“That’s a good question. I’m not sure I know,” Anderson said. “Each guy is working on their approach or their swing against lefties, and I think guys just need to keep going with it. I don’t think there’s a wholesale change that anybody needs to make, or something we need to do as a team immediately.

“I think it’s something that we are going to get better at. I don’t think that’s something we’re going to continue to struggle with the rest of the year. All we can do right now is keep our heads down, working and trying to get better.”