Since April 16, the New York Mets are 5-12 in games that Jacob deGrom has started in. With a 3-2 loss to the San Diego Padres last night, deGrom is now just 5-5 on the season.

But if you’ve been watching this team, even if for just three weeks in this lousy, miserable season, you would know that there isn’t a single baseball player who has been as badly burned by his teammates as deGrom.

Whether they actually have a vendetta against him or are actually that inept, the blue and orange writing is on the wall, and it ain’t pretty.

In his last three starts, deGrom has turned in eight innings in each, struck out 25 batters, walked only four, and only allowed four earned runs. He has been rewarded with just three total runs of support.

Last night, the righty turned in his 12th consecutive quality start. The last Met to push boundaries quite like that, R.A. Dickey, posted 14 between the 2011 and 2012 seasons on his way to an NL Cy Young.

Dickey, bless his heart, was gifted with a renaissance at 38-years-old behind a team that paid Jason Bay and Bernie Madoff more money than it did either David Wright or Jose Reyes. Dickey’s time in New York is often viewed as a memento to take from two otherwise forgettable years. The stretch deGrom has posted, however, just adds to the anger that has pervaded the last two seasons.

DeGrom allowed runs in consecutive innings for the first time all season. His ERA rose from 1.68 to 1.71, but even then, is still 42 points ahead of Boston Red Sox all-star Chris Sale for first in the major leagues. He threw 83 out of 113 total pitches for strikes. The Mets failed to hash out a single extra-base hit.

The righty had faced the minimum 13 hitters as he took the signs against third baseman Christian Villanueva with one out in the top of the fifth inning. Things had been a little dodgy at the beginning of the frame, when deGrom fell behind 3-0 to Eric Hosmer (who had singled to lead off the second before being doubled off), but the threat was immediately neutralized as deGrom painted three strikes to set him aside. Now a usually strikeout-prone Villanueva stood in, down 1-2, no less.

It was at this moment that the Mets turned their back on their most consistent, valuable player.

Jose Bautista dropped the lazy fly ball to right, Villanueva then stole second base, and came full circle after Freddy Galvis snuck a ground ball into the outfield to plate an unearned run and put San Diego on the board first. Manuel Margot‘s triple into left-center made it 2-0, effectively putting the game out of reach. The inning dragged its way to 29 pitches after deGrom, ahead 0-2 for the third consecutive plate appearance, finally got his way on a Carlos Asuaje pop out behind home plate.

Another run came home in the sixth, this one also earned, after Wil Myers doubled and scored on an Amed Rosario error that, sequentially speaking, had no impact, since Myers, even with an out recorded, would have technically scored on Villanueva’s flyout to right.

Of course, deGrom’s abilities in both limiting the fly ball and stranding base runners throughout the year, paired with a flyball-avoidant matchup, suggest that Villanueva wouldn’t have been able to muster that sort of contact anyway. The strikeout looking to Galvis to end the sixth and the three-up, three-down seventh all but confirmed that deGrom was still in competitive spirits.

When deGrom talked manager Mickey Callaway away from the bullpen with two outs in the eighth inning, it became clear that deGrom was pitching with a chip on his shoulder. A masterful strikeout of Hosmer, punctuated by a wicked curveball, was the only tangible fruit in deGrom’s laborious, frustrating loss.

Upon returning to the clubhouse after the game, deGrom had the privilege of answering even more questions surrounding the possibility that the Mets trade him in a potential deadline fire sale:

“I’ve been a New York Met my whole career and I have a good relationship with them,’’ he said. “[The trade]’s not my decision. I enjoy my time here.’’

Those last five words, whether they’re true or not, speak to the professional attitude deGrom has carried through his entire career as a Met, whether that ends in the next week or the next decade. The righty has kept his composure despite watching his veteran teammates ship off to greener, more competitive pastures over the last two years, and has been the same soldier in the field.

When asked about the particular ineptitude that has unfolded behind deGrom, Callaway said “those things pop into your head when you’re pitching, but he definitely didn’t let it affect him and he didn’t show it… We just keep on talking to him about the things he can control. He knows that and when we talk to him about it, he’s kind of, ‘Yeah, I can’t do anything about it. I can just go out there and do my best.'”

Somebody so gifted as both a pitcher and teammate shouldn’t be dragged through the mud while his team embarks on a dubious rebuild. But the alternative – that deGrom is sent elsewhere because everybody around him mooched off his success instead of doing their best to give back – has left me at a blood-boiling crossroads. Imagine being Jacob deGrom.