The Mets spent much of their offseason trying to improve their run prevention skills. They subtracted three below-average fielders from their roster – Pete Alonso, Jeff McNeil and Brandon Nimmo – and added former Gold Glovers Marcus Semien and Luis Robert Jr. to fortify their defense. They slid middle infielders Jorge Polanco and Bo Bichette to the corner spots on the diamond, hoping for a smooth transition off of the more demanding positions. The team has battled injuries and inconsistency, but they hit a crisis point on Wednesday night, committing six errors in a humiliating 10-5 loss to the Cubs, their fifth defeat in a row.

The circus began in the first inning, when Francisco Lindor, fresh off the injured list, bobbled a ground ball from Seiya Suzuki. Luckily, Sean Manaea was able to escape the frame unscathed. The same can’t be said about the fourth inning, though. After a lead-off double by Nico Hoerner, Semien bobbled a ground ball from Carson Kelly, then threw wide to Mark Vientos, allowing Kelly to reach. The Cubs proceeded to score three runs on three straight singles and a wild pitch, taking a 4-3 lead.

“I feel like Manaea could have gone a little longer, and I added at least 15 pitches,” Lindor said after the game. “We’re better than what we showed today.”

In the seventh inning, Semien committed his second error of the night, letting a pop-up from Hoerner tip off his glove in shallow right field. Fortunately for him, Luke Weaver induced a double play grounder from Kelly, keeping the Mets’ deficit at just 6-5. In the following inning, Pedro Ramírez led off the frame by hitting a routine ground ball to Bichette, who bobbled the ball and was unable to make a throw. Two batters later, Vientos made an errant throw to A.J. Minter on a grounder from Pete Crow-Armstrong, allowing Ramírez to score. That miscue gave every player on the Mets’ infield an error for the night, the first time that had happened since September 8, 1962.

The defensive malfunctions continued in the ninth inning. After Hoerner’s two-out double, Vientos booted a grounder from Kelly for the Mets’ sixth error of the night. With the inning extended, Ramírez and Dansby Swanson hit consecutive singles, bringing home three runs and putting the game out of reach. The frustrated fans chanted Pete Alonso’s name, then headed for the exits following Swanson’s knock.

“It’s hard to explain,” Carlos Mendoza said in his postgame press conference. “Just a tough night overall.”

For much of the early part of the season, the Mets looked like a much-improved defensive team. They still rank eighth in the majors with 21 defensive runs saved. However, they’ve fallen to 20th in outs above average (negative-8) and 20th in fielding run value (negative-5). The normally sure-handed Semien has seen his defensive metrics plummet, going from plus-6 OAA in 2025 to negative-3 this year.

“Today was just a tough day all the way around,” Semien said after Wednesday’s nightcap. “We did not play well for two games, and it became frustrating after game 1. We wanted to come back out in game 2 and play well and it just didn’t happen, that’s mostly what I’m thinking about: performing way under par today and I really just want to get back here tomorrow and just play better baseball.”

Sitting at a season-worst 12 games below .500 and nine games out of a Wild Card spot, the Mets have run out of time for these issues to fix themselves. The team has been inconsistent in all facets of the game this year, but the team that preached about run prevention in the offseason has seen some of the same problems that doomed them last season resurface.