The 5 worst moments of the 2023 Mets season

With 90 games in the books and 72 still left to be played, the New York Mets are more than halfway through one of the most disappointing seasons in team history. Thought by many to be among the handful of true World Series contenders before the season began, the Mets will now be lucky to even snare the third Wild Card spot.

In a season that has defied expectations in the worst way imaginable, Mets fans have had to grapple with the pain that they've come to know all too well over years of tortured support. Here are our choices for the five worst moments in a season that has featured many more.

1) Justin Verlander gives up back-to-back homers in the first inning of his Mets debut

The loss of Jacob deGrom to the Texas Rangers cut deep. DeGrom was a pitcher that came up through the Mets organization, blossoming into the best pitcher in the league.

DeGrom's health troubles in recent years allowed Mets fans to rationalize his departure, and the arrival of 2022 AL Cy Young winner Justin Verlander was supposed to fill the void left by one of the best pitchers of his generation.

Verlander's Mets debut was delayed due to an injury of his own, but when he finally took the mound in May against one of his old teams, the Detroit Tigers, Mets fans heralded him as the savior that could rescue the team from the 2-8 tailspin that had seen them fall to just a game above .500.

Those dreams were quickly dashed, as Verlander allowed back-to-back home runs against the second and third batters he faced in the game. Though he settled down in not allowing another run over five innings, the damage was done, and the Mets bats mustered only three hits on their way to their sixth shutout loss of the season.

2) The Mets blow a 5-1 lead to the Yankees

Every loss hurts, but losses to the Yankees hurt just a little bit more. The Subway Series always has extra juice compared to other regular season games, and the chance to get bragging rights against the their crosstown rivals is something Mets fans look forward to every year.

If you're like me, you have many friends and family members that prefer Yankee pinstripes to blue and orange. Like me, you also probably turned your phone off after the Mets yakked away a 5-1 lead on June 13th to shield yourself from those alleged loved ones.

Max Scherzer got rocked in the fourth inning by a Yankee lineup that was missing Aaron Judge, but the Mets tied it an inning later. The Yankees retook the lead for good in the sixth inning, as Brandon Nimmo inexplicably dropped a shallow fly ball to center.

The Mets tantalized us by loading the bases with one out in the eighth, but Francisco Lindor and Starling Marte both struck out against Yankees reliever Clay Holmes. Adding insult to injury, Mets reliever Drew Smith was tossed from the game before he even threw a pitch, as umpires found sticky stuff on his hands.

Oh, and this loss was the Mets' ninth in ten games.

3) The rubber game implosion in Philadelphia

Full disclosure: I was at this game, and I'm still angry about it.

My mom and I drove down from New York to see the Mets play in Citizens Bank Park for the first time. For much of the afternoon, it was a wonderful experience. The stadium was great, the Phillies fans were surprisingly non-homicidal, and we enjoyed cheesesteak and ice cream from the right field seats as the Mets scored in five consecutive innings on their way to a 6-3 lead.

Then everything unraveled. Josh Walker came on in the eighth and gave up two walks and a single. Buck Showalter then opted to bring in Jeff Brigham over the more established members of his bullpen, and things went haywire.

Brigham induced a soft ground ball that should have been, if not a double play, a force at second, but Brett Baty morphed into an unholy chimera of Mackey Sasser and Chuck Knoblauch, double-clutching his throw to Jeff McNeil before yanking it right of the second base bag.

How do I put this? Brigham didn't exactly handle the error well, walking a run in and drilling two Phillies to give up the lead for good. The Mets got the leadoff man on in the ninth, but never advanced him as Craig Kimbrel closed the door.

This may have been the Mets' worst loss of the season, because it was completely self-inflicted. With their best relievers languishing in the bullpen, the Mets made the Phillies bystanders to their own victory, and the resulting two-game swing could loom large when the Wild Card chase is all said and done.

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.