The Mets often enter the Subway Series as the little brother fighting for respect. Now they are in freefall, toeing the tightrope between failing and forgotten.
Consider that before the last Subway Series, the Mets were 32-33, five games out of first place. Now they're 38-47, and 12 games behind the Braves. They ended a seven-game losing streak Sunday, but the Mets have done nothing to convince us that this team can contend, with their biggest wound at the most vital organ inside an MLB organism.
And while we can point to a number of players -- new or not -- who haven't played to the back of their baseball cards, the Mets are blowing games at comical rates because of a rickety bullpen that is springing leaks at historic levels.
At the end of June, the Mets had become the only team in MLB history to blow eight-plus saves in back-to-back months. After their seventh-straight loss on Saturday, they had blown 21 saves in 40 chances. (Believe it or not, they haven't even lost every game in which they've blown a save.) Right now the Mets' bullpen has a 5.58 ERA, which ranks 28th out of 30 MLB clubs.
Despite shutting the door on the Braves on Sunday, Edwin Diaz has not been the electric closer the Mets anticipated when they traded for the MLB saves leader in 2018. Diaz has a 4.78 ERA, compared to his 1.96 ERA last year. While his fastball can tickle triple digits on the radar gun, his secondary pitch hasn't been the same. According to The New York Times, Diaz threw his slider for a strike 56% of the time last year. Now, the number is down to 34%. Diaz has hemorrhaged seven home runs this year, as opposed to five all of last year.
Even their best setup man, Seth Lugo, has lost his mojo. After a stellar 21-game span in which he produced a scoreless outing 19 times, Lugo has blown a save in his last three outings. The bullpen has been the sad catalyst in another June swoon that saw the Mets drop 13 of 17 games entering Sunday. Just in June, their bullpen's ERA hovered around 7.50, worst in the game.
And there's something particularly deflating, something poignant and painful about gagging games you were leading late. There's something so sorry about clawing your way to a lead after six or seven innings only to have a reliever kick you back down the well. The Mets have morphed into Sisyphus, the king of Corinth, who slowly rolled that big rock up a hill only to have it tumble back down just as he reached the top.
WFAN's Boomer Esiason and Gregg Giannotti have often lamented that the Mets would be decent had their bullpen not been so rancid. Indeed, the Mets would be well above .500 ball had they blown just 11 games instead of 21. Now they have to face the hottest team in baseball, the Yankees, who also happen to be the Mets' eternal tormentors. Though they are only separated by the Harlem and East rivers, they are galaxies apart everywhere else.
These are baseball ships going in divergent directions. The Yanks (54-28) are moonwalking to first place in the AL East, having just clubbed the Boston Red Sox in London, and seem to be on a 9-1 run for weeks. Meanwhile, the Mets may be a week away from signing off for the summer, and the Yankees are the lava they must walk through to get back some respect.
If logic lorded over baseball, the Mets would be led to slaughter Tuesday night, while Flushing is reduced to symbolic rubble. Yet the Mets are also two quick wins from a stay of symbolic execution.
A shame their bullpen must be a part of it.
Follow Jason on Twitter at @JasonKeidel.
