3 Mets players who fell short of expectations in the first 81 games, 2 who exceeded them

We've officially reached the halfway point in the 2023 season, and the New York Mets are an absolute mess. A 36-45 record highlighted by a 7-18 month of June (with one more game to play) has this team that won 101 games last season nine games back of the last Wild Card spot and an unfathomable 17.5 games back in the NL East.

The Mets didn't lose their 45th game until August 22nd last season and here we are on June 29th with 45 losses already. Nothing is going right for this team. When they hit they don't pitch, when they pitch they don't hit. We've seen Steve Cohen speak to the media in hopes that maybe he'd spark them, but nothing seems to be working.

The Mets have had a couple of players perform admirably, but for the most part, we've seen this team fail to come close to reaching expectations. With hopes that things turn around, here're three players who failed to reach the lofty expectations the Mets had through the first half of the season, and two others who have.

1) NY Mets pitcher Justin Verlander has fallen short of expectations through the 1st 81 games of the 2023 season

Last offseason it was Max Scherzer, and this offseason it was Justin Verlander. The Mets signed Justin Verlander this offseason to a two-year deal worth $86.6 million, the same AAV as Max Scherzer, to essentially replace Jacob deGrom.

This was something I was all for. As much as I loved deGrom and appreciated everything he did for this Mets organization, it felt like Verlander on a shorter-term deal made more sense as a guy who was more reliable to stay on the field and help the Mets win now.

Verlander, the reigning AL Cy Young Award winner missed the entire first month of the season due to injury, and since returning, has not looked close to the pitcher he was in Houston.

Through ten starts, Verlander has an ERA of 4.11 in 57 innings pitched. Now a 4.11 ERA isn't so bad, but when that ERA is 2.5 runs higher than the season prior, that's a problem. Nobody expected another 1.75 ERA season from Verlander, but we expected a whole lot better than this.

Verlander has gone past five innings just five times, and has allowed four runs or more four times. His walks are up, home runs are up, strikeouts are down, it's all trending downwards.

He did pitch five scoreless innings his last time out against Milwaukee, but when five scoreless against a pretty bad Brewers offense is one of his highlights, that's not great.