The 5 worst moments of the 2023 Mets season

4) The bullpen gives up seven unanswered runs in a crushing Mets loss to the Braves

Many of the Mets problems this season can be traced to the bullpen just not being good enough, and nowhere was that more evident than in a devastating loss to the Braves.

The Mets had already lost five straight coming into this game, including the first two of the series in Atlanta. In each of those games, the Mets had blown multi-run leads, so it gave Mets fans little comfort when they once again surged ahead with an early offensive explosion.

By this point in the season, the Braves had already blown past the rest of the NL East, and they were riding a four-game winning streak at the time of this game.

What I remember most from this game was that it never felt like the Mets were going to win, even as the game got late. Travis d'Arnaud continued his lifelong quest to haunt the Mets for letting him go, cranking a two-run homer off of Drew Smith in the eighth inning to cut the lead to one.

With the game slipping away, Buck Showalter brought in David Robertson to try and nail down a five-out save. The normally reliable veteran got out of the inning, but then gave up a one-out bomb to Orlando Arcia in the ninth.

The game may as well have been decided by that point, but it was made official after Ozzie Albies hit a homer of his own to win it in the tenth. Incredibly, the loss snapped a 122-game winning streak for the Mets when leading after eight innings.

This loss was a real back-breaker for the Mets, and it reinforced the notion that the Braves own them. Last year's stunning comeback to steal the division was bad enough, but the Braves showed that it's going to be an uphill battle to take the crown back anytime soon.