Did the Mets just complete their worst month in franchise history?

NEW YORK — As Patrick Bailey’s go-ahead homer rattled around by the batter’s eye in center field, Pete Alonso raised his eyes to the smoky heavens. What else could happen to the Mets in June?

Bailey’s three-run homer off David Robertson was a fitting coda to a wretched month for the Mets. They lost by one run for the second straight night and the fourth time this week. Over the past six days, five different New York relievers have picked up a loss, Robertson the latest and least expected.

The Mets finished the month of June with a 7-19 record. The three teams now ahead of them in the National League East standings (Atlanta, Miami and Philadelphia) combined to lose just 20 games this month. The Giants team that beat the Mets Friday moved 10 games ahead of them in the wild-card standings; they were a game behind New York when June started.

In 30 days, New York lost 14 1/2 games in the NL East standings to Atlanta and 10 in the wild card.

“We’re glad to see the month behind us,” manager Buck Showalter said. “Hopefully we get something started in July.”

Beat the Mets 🎶
Step right up and beat the Mets 🎶
— SFGiants (@SFGiants) July 1, 2023

Which means it’s reasonable to wonder: Was this the worst month in franchise history?

Let’s explore. Note that this is a non-exhaustive list. There are other very bad months that did not make the cut.

July 1963

Record: 4-25
Run differential: -87
Standings at the start: 9th, down 16 1/2
Standings at the finish: 10th, down 31

By record, June 2023 was “only” the 15th-worst month the Mets have ever had. No Mets team had a rougher month on the field by record than the ’63 squad that July, which won only four times in 29 tries. Their minus-87 run differential, the worst in a month in franchise history, meant they averaged a three-run loss each day.

The month had a clear high point: three wins on three straight days from July 15 through July 17. (There was a doubleheader nightcap mixed in that they lost.) The combined crowd for those three days at the Polo Grounds? Less than 37,000.

Stacking wins in the middle of the month meant it started with 12 straight losses to extend a losing streak to 15. An 11-game streak would follow after the 17th.

But this can’t be the worst month in Mets’ history. In just its second year of existence, the franchise carried zero expectations. We don’t have proper playoff odds that go back that far in history, but it’s safe to say the Mets’ odds were 0.0 percent at the start of the month.

June 2018

Record: 5-21
Run differential: -41
Standings at the start: 4th, down five in the division; 3 1/2 out in wild card
Standings at the finish: 5th, down 14 1/2 in the division; 11 1/2 out in wild card

You don’t have to go too far back to find a June that was technically worse than this one. In Mickey Callaway’s first season as manager, the Mets got off to a roaring 11-1 start. They came crashing back to .500 by the end of May, and in June they earned an ignominious distinction: No team in major-league history had been both 10 games over .500 and 10 games under .500 so quickly in a season.

June included two separate seven-game losing streaks. Jacob deGrom pitched to a 2.36 ERA over six starts that month — his worst of any in 2018 — and went 1-4.

The month also included GM Sandy Alderson stepping down to deal with a recurrence of cancer, and the Mets replacing him with a triumvirate of executives — an approach that limited what New York could do over the next month heading into the trade deadline.

But again, while the ’18 squad inspired dreams of contention with that start, it did not enter the year widely expected to be playing in October. And Yoenis Céspedes’ heel injury, which would alter the competitive landscape for the club over the next year-plus, was still a couple of weeks away.

August 2002

Record: 6-21
Run differential: -45
Standings at the start: 2nd, down 13 1/2 in division; 4 1/2 out of wild card
Standings at the finish: 5th, down 23 1/2 in division; 16 out of wild card

Here’s a month that started with the Mets actually in postseason contention. Contrary to how you might remember it, the very disappointing 2002 Mets weren’t a disaster from the start. A solid finish to July had brought them back into the postseason picture, trailing only the Dodgers and Giants for a wild card in the National League. They’d had a relatively quiet deadline, adding veteran reliever Steve Reed in a deal that included prospect Jason Bay going to San Diego.

And then they did something no Mets team has ever done: They went winless for the month at home. They opened August by dropping a tight rubber game to the Astros before being swept in four at home by the Diamondbacks. After a 3-3 road trip, they came back home and were swept again in three by the Padres and three more by the Dodgers — putting them 12 1/2 back in the wild card. After a 3-5 road trip, their woes returned again at Shea, stretching into September with another sweep to the Phillies. In all, the Mets lost 16 straight home games — 14 of them in August — to fall helplessly out of the postseason picture.

While this team earns a special distinction for its issues at home, it was far enough on the outskirts of playoff contention that it can’t win this contest.

August 2021

Record: 9-19
Run differential: -25
Standings at the start: 1st place, up four
Standings at the finish: 3rd place, down five

Now this squad was a different caliber of postseason contender, at least at the start of the month. Yes, the Mets were reeling a little at the end of that July: Francisco Lindor had already missed a couple of weeks, and they learned just before the trade deadline that deGrom would be out longer than expected. (It turned out to be the rest of the season.)

But they were still in first place, and second-place Atlanta had lost its own superstar, Ronald Acuña Jr., for the season and had made only modest acquisitions at the deadline. We do have playoff odds for a season this recent, and so we know the Mets started this month with a 71.6 percent chance of playing in October, according to FanGraphs.

They closed it with a 6.8 percent chance, which still felt too high.

August 2021’s spiral really accelerated during a 2-11 fortnight against the 106-win Dodgers and 107-win Giants. That month also included several Mets players giving thumbs-down gestures to fans, which, as you remember, did not endear them to said fan base.

Those thumbs-down gestures at least came to light during a three-game winning streak to close the month …

June 2023

Record: 7-19
Run differential: -11
Standings at the start: 2nd, down four in the division; tied for the second wild card
Standings at the finish: 4th, down 18 1/2 in the division; 10 out in the wild card

The run differential really hints at the remarkable nature of this past month for the Mets, who led in 13 of their 19 losses. (They led by at least three in five of the 19 losses.) After a five-game winning streak — all by one run — in late May got the Mets back into a groove, they lost seven of their eight one-run games this June.

And context in the division and the league matters. While the Mets went 7-19, here’s what happened in the NL East:

• Atlanta went 21-4
• Miami went 19-8
• Philadelphia went 18-8

Their playoff odds didn’t plummet quite as much as they did during August 2021 — they were down from 62.5 percent to 9.1 percent before Friday night’s loss, according to FanGraphs — but that’s because there’s still half a season to go and the Mets carried higher expectations entering this season than in any other listed here.

In the span of 30 days, the Mets went from a team looking to contend for a championship right here, right now, to one lacking a competitive timetable — with a lot of big decisions to make between now and the trade deadline.

“This month,” Alonso said Friday, “has been really tough.”

What could be worse than this?

September 2007

Record: 14-14
Run differential: -2
Standings at the start: 1st place, up three
Standings at the finish: 2nd place, down one

Oh, right.

One could argue that the Mets’ solid start to September 2007, in which they rebounded from a crushing four-game sweep in Philadelphia in the final days of August to win 10 of their next 12, should disqualify it from the list. After all, the Mets went 14-14 over the full month — a full six games better than what they just endured.

But really, those first two weeks of September only accentuated the collapse of the last two. If you’re of a certain age, you can probably rattle off the stats yourself: The Mets blew a division lead of seven over their final 17 games, going 5-12 down the stretch. They allowed eight or more runs in eight different games during that final stretch, permitting the Phillies to pass them on the final day of the season.

What happens last, in a baseball season, happens longest.

(Photo of Pete Alonso: Dustin Satloff / Getty Images)