What has gone wrong for the Mets? Breaking down their recent losing skid and second-half woes

It wasn't the biggest deed of Pete Alonso's career, but his walk-off, three-run homer successful the 10th inning connected Sunday was surely the biggest for the New York Mets successful their past 9 games -- and possibly their biggest of the run truthful far.

"He prolonged their play successful 2024," said Mets broadcaster Ron Darling, referring to Alonso's ninth-inning location tally to bushed the Milwaukee Brewers successful the wild-card series. "He mightiness person saved their play successful 2025."

It didn't dependable similar hyperbole, arsenic the Mets had mislaid 8 games successful a enactment earlier securing Sunday's 5-2 victory. They had watched the Philadelphia Phillies tally retired mode up successful a National League East part that the Mets erstwhile led and had watched their comfy pb for the last wild-card spot shrink to fractional a crippled implicit the San Francisco Giants.

As lone a die-hard Mets instrumentality could recognize -- remember, this was a franchise that blew a seven-game pb with 17 games to play successful 2007 to miss the playoffs -- that eight-game skid was misery piled connected apical of much misery. The Mets mislaid doubly to the Cincinnati Reds. They mislaid 4 successful a enactment to Philadelphia, including a 1-0 determination and a blown 4-0 first-inning lead. On Friday, they mislaid to Jacob deGrom successful his archetypal crippled backmost astatine Citi Field since signing with the Texas Rangers. Then came the eventual gut punch: They blew a 2-0 pb successful the last 2 innings to the Rangers connected Saturday, giving up 2 runs successful the eighth and the winning tally successful the ninth. Eight losses successful a row.

New York (77-73) insisted it wasn't panicking, with Juan Soto saying aft Saturday's loss, "We person the energy. We person the guys. We person everything we request to spell each the way."

But bash they? The Mets, featuring a $340 cardinal payroll, the 2nd highest successful the game, person been among the worst teams successful shot since mid-June. On June 12, the Mets bushed the Washington Nationals to amended to 45-24. They had the champion grounds successful the majors, led the Phillies by 5.5 games successful the NL East and, according to FanGraphs, had a 75% accidental of winning the part and a 96% accidental of making the playoffs.

Since then, however, lone the Colorado Rockies and the Minnesota Twins person had worse records, portion the Nationals person matched the Mets astatine 32-49.

What happened? Let's look astatine 3 main components of their crippled -- the rotation, the bullpen and the discourtesy -- to spot what has gone wrong.

1. The starting pitching got worse

Through June 12: 2.79 ERA (first successful majors)
Since June 12: 5.09 ERA (24th)

Things got truthful hopeless that the Mets are present featuring 3 rookies successful their rotation successful Nolan McLean (who ma...