QUEENS — The Mets lose; the Braves win. Lather, rinse, repeat.
As they continue to prove that there are limitless discoveries on how to drop ballgames, the Mets were three-hit by the Milwaukee Brewers during a 2-1 loss on Monday night at Citi Field. After the bullpen blew a 6-3 lead on Sunday afternoon in Philadelphia against the Phillies, reliever Drew Smith gave up a decisive sixth-inning two-run home run to Joey Wiemer in the sixth inning to dismantle Justin Verlander’s slim 1-0 lead.
A team that won 101 games last season and entered this year as a perceived World Series contender is now 35-42 and eight games under .500 — a hole built on the shoulders of a horrid stretch that has seen it lose seven of nine games and 16 of their last 21.
“I don’t think anybody saw this coming,” Verlander, who signed a two-year, $86.6 million deal with the Mets this winter, said. “Disappointing, disappointing for everybody in this room, it’s disappointing for the fans.”
Following the Braves’ 4-1 victory over the Minnesota Twins to improve to 51-27 on Monday night, the fourth-place Mets’ deficit in the National League East is now at a season-high 16 games, which lends to the obvious notion that their hopes of winning the division are already lost before two weeks before the All-Star break.
Their playoff hopes in general are beginning to thin, as well. Even with the expanded postseason, manager Buck Showalter’s men are 8.5 games back of the final NL Wild Card spot, which is owned by the Los Angeles Dodgers.
“We just have to keep trying,” Verlander said. “If there’s one thing I know it’s that the guys in this room are trying our ass off… Hopefully, it clicks for everybody. But we gotta get going. Soon.”
But the Mets are now three games away from hitting the mathematical midway point of the season and the same problems continue to plague the richest team in baseball: When the bats perform, the pitching sags. When the arms are on point, the offense goes to sleep.
It ultimately leaves Steve Cohen in a precarious situation considering the money he invested into a team that was supposed to take another step toward World Series contention this year.
“We just gotta win games,” Showalter said. “I could bore you with a lot of things that are going on, but we just have to get back to how we’ve shown we can play in the past. But just because you’ve done something int he past, good or bad, you don’t become a prisoner of that… You have to get it fixed. It falls under the real obvious, it’s a pretty obvious answer.”
