Mets suffer latest ugly disaster to Nationals as nightmare start hits new low

It’s official: The Mets are the worst team in baseball. And Wednesday, especially, they looked the part.  Join Post Sports+ for exciting subscriber-only features, including real-time texting with Mike Puma about the inside buzz on the Mets.Five weeks into the season and with a sky-high payroll, the mismatched disaster that is the Mets roster was overmatched again in a 14-2 loss to the lowly Nationals at Citi Field that wasn’t as close as the score might indicate. With their latest defeat — when they allowed a season high in runs — the Mets fell to 10-20.

That’s a half-game behind their NL East rivals, the Phillies, who were rained out and remained 10-19. The weather was not as kind to the Mets faithful, as a few thousand masochists stuck around on a miserable, wet night in Queens to watch … what, exactly? David Peterson delivered his latest awful start, as the lefty’s ERA as a starter jumped to 8.10 after allowing seven runs in just 3 ²/₃ innings. Another rotation castoff, Sean Manaea, was called upon to replace Peterson and allowed a grand slam in the fourth. And the offense, which briefly awoke during a seven-run fourth inning in Tuesday’s win, went back to its typical ineptness against Washington right-hander Cade Cavalli. The lone exception to the collapse was Juan Soto, who looked to be in peak form. He homered in a second straight game and added a single and a double. But as everyone from Carlos Mendoza to David Stearns to Soto himself has said, even Soto can’t carry the team by himself. The Mets, though, apparently wanted to test that theory against the Nationals, as Soto — serving as the DH again as he deals with left forearm discomfort — provided just about the only positives for a Mets team that’s now dropped four of five. And there are five months to go. “We’ve got to play better baseball, period,” Mendoza said before the game.“Regardless of who we’re playing, we’ve got to start winning series.

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