Cespedes was batting .270 with six home runs, walking in a career high 14.7 percent of his plate appearances. He was also creating runs at a rate that was 62 percent higher than average after adjusting for league and park effects (162 wRC+), the eighth-highest mark in the National League.

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“From what I saw, I don’t know of anybody coming back in 10 days walking off like that coming off the field,” said Mets manager Terry Collins on Thursday, referring to Cespedes. Friday afternoon the team placed Cespedes on the 10-day disabled list.

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Syndergaard had just four starts, but he struck out 30 batters in 26 innings without issuing a walk, which, according to Elias, is tied for the second-most strikeouts without a walk to begin a season since 1900. His pitching has been so good his 1.73 ERA should be even lower (0.78 FIP) if he were to have experienced league average results on balls in play and league average timing.

The loss of Cespedes and Syndergaard is enough to cripple any team, but those injuries are in addition to starters Steven Matz and Seth Lugo, third baseman David Wright, outfielder Brandon Nimmo, infielder Wilmer Flores and first baseman Lucas Duda, who are all nursing ailments of varying degrees.

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No wonder the Mets have lost 10 of their last 11 games, falling to last place in NL East and 7.5 games behind division rival Washington Nationals, who are New York’s next opponent starting on Friday.

Maybe the Mets could weather the storm if they were playing well, but they aren’t. Two members of the starting rotation — Zack Wheeler and Matt Harvey — are giving up more than a home run per nine innings, with Harvey approaching the two-home run per game mark (1.82). The bullpen is walking close to five batters per nine innings (4.6), second only to the Milwaukee Brewers’ (4.95). And the team is batting .209 with an OPS (.661) that is 23 percent lower than the league average.

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“We know it’s early,” Mets infielder Jose Reyes said. “But we don’t want to go too deep in the standings.”

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Reyes, you may want to click away because now it’s time for even more bad news.

Since MLB added the wild card to each league in 1994, just one team, the 2012 Oakland Athletics, has overcome as bad a batting average and OPS combination as the Mets are having in April.

That was a remarkable season for Oakland. The A’s trailed the Texas Rangers by 5.5 games on May 1 of that year and posted a 83-55 record from that point on, finally wrestling away the division from the Rangers during the last game of the season. The Mets are expected to go 74-67 the rest of the way, giving them a 38.5 percent chance at a playoff berth, a significant decline from the beginning of the season (58.2 percent).