Jonah Kerri’s Page 2 list of “100 Players To Hate” has ten Mets entries, and remarkably, none of ’em are named Scott Schoeneweis. And while it remains to be seen if tonight’s 2nd inning, 3-0 lead over the Nats will hold up for Brian Lawrence and the gasoline-pouring Mets bullpen, the Times-Herald Record’s Mike Geffner predicts Willie Randolph’s charges are primed for “one of the greatest chokes ever by a New York baseball team, right up with there with the Dodgers blowing the NL pennant to the Giants in 1951 and the Yankees losing those four straight to Red Sox in the 2004 ALCS.”

Over these last three huge games, ending with the Phillies sweeping the Mets aside once again this season, the Mets found a way of gradually regressing from bad to worse to ultimately something so ugly that the word “ugly” doesn’t remotely do it justice.

All of which has tilted the Mets’ currently fragile mind-set from concerned to downright jittery ” and heading on the fast track to nothing less than panic city.

They needed just a single win in this series to stave off a disastrous weekend and, for the life of them, they just couldn’t do it, playing the role of easy pushovers rather than division divas for a whole season.

At the worst of times, they suddenly look like a team that’s way too soft and too passionless and too young and too dumb.

They’ve also got the 2nd best record in the National League, having played virtually the entire season with one key component or another on the disabled list. Sure, there’s no way of sugar coating what happened at Shea over the past 4 days, but Geffner seems to forget the Phillies have fallen further behind the Mets since the last CBP sweep.