The world’s most expensive losers: the New York Mets are very rich … and very, very bad

The Mets have the worst record in baseball this season. Photograph: Angelina Katsanis/AP A franchise once known as baseball’s lovable losers are, for the moment, merely baseball’s most expensive losers. The New York Mets wrapped a shocking April by losing 5-4 to the Washington Nationals on Thursday, dropping to a major league-worst 10-21 and burrowing even deeper into last place in the National League East – making them somehow even worse than their old rivals the Philadelphia Phillies, another wealthy-yet-terrible team .

The Mets will (probably) not play at their current 52-win pace all year but their sordid first month has done immense damage to their postseason hopes. Their chances at October baseball were 87% on Opening Day, according to the analytics site FanGraphs . They are now less than three-in-10 to make the playoffs, and that projection seems pretty generous for a team who have lost 17 of their last 20 games.

“Not good enough,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said after Thursday’s loss. “Obviously not a secret. That’s not going to do it.

We got to start winning series. Period. ” Related: Slumping Phillies fire manager Rob Thomson after losing 11 of last 12 games Zoom out, and the picture gets worse.