NAMES AND NUMBERS

* MISERY: Dwight Gooden seems to have succumbed to the trauma of the New York Mets’ season. He has lost three consecutive decisions, seven of his last 11 and, at 11-13, is challenging Scott Erickson (7-15), Bill Wegman (4-14) and Doug Drabek (7-14) for the major league lead in losses, now that Anthony Young (1-15) has been sent to the minors.

Gooden would have been a leading supporter of a September player strike.

“Anything to get this over with,” he told Newsday. “In 1985, when we had that one-day strike, I had about 17 or 18 wins. I didn’t want to go home. But if we had one now, I could find a way to get lost in Florida.”

* ADD METS: The still sidelined Vince Coleman has not stolen a base since July 15 but continues to lead the National League in that category with 38. The Mets, however, have only stolen another 31 as a team and were last in the NL with 69 through Thursday. They had not even attempted a steal in their last nine games, and had been unsuccessful on 21 of their last 32 attempts.

* WINGED: Injuries put Chris Hoiles, Gregg Olson, Jeff Hammonds, Leo Gomez and Mike Mussina, activated Friday, on the disabled list and took the Baltimore Orioles out of the American League East race when they were the hottest of the hot. An eight-game winning streak that put the Orioles within half a game of the lead on Aug. 9 was followed by an eight-game losing streak that left them 6 1/2 out.

The Orioles were also grounded by Rick Sutcliffe’s inability to shake a second-half slump. Sutcliffe, the American League’s comeback player of the year in ’92 with 16 victories, is 1-7 with a 7.97 earned-run average in his last 10 starts, having given up 25 first-inning runs in the 10 and having not lasted four innings in five of those starts. The return of Mussina threatened his place in the rotation.

* MILESTONE: Dave Winfield of the Minnesota Twins, after a .355 July in which he hit nine home runs and drove in 25 runs, has cooled some as he closes in on 3,000 hits, but as of Friday, when he needed 19 more, he was still batting .301 since the All-Star break. He was also batting .286 with 44 home runs and 173 RBIs in 269 games since turning 40 on Oct. 3, 1991.

* BATTING TITLE: Andres Galarraga, sidelined since July 25 because of a knee injury, returned to the Colorado Rocky lineup Saturday. He now is batting .387 and needs 166 plate appearances in the Rockies’ final 39 games to reach the 502 necessary to qualify for a batting title.

Galarraga had 169 plate appearances in his first 41 games after returning from a hamstring pull in May, batting .372 over that span. Manager Don Baylor said he would bat Galarraga first or second in the lineup during the season’s final week if, providing the games against the Giants and Braves have no bearing on the pennant race.