Mike Celizic

It’s inconceivable that the Mets have arrived at this nightmarish situation.

But even if you’re a Mets fan who’s been rendered catatonic by despair, you’ve got to appreciate baseball’s bottomless ability to astonish you with things you’ve never seen before, things that were supposed to be impossible.

Things like not one National League playoff slot wrapped up with just three games left in the season. Things like seven teams still in contention for four tickets to October. Things like the New York Mets, the most expensive team National League money can buy, blowing a seven-game lead in the space of just 14 games.

The Mets haven’t lost the NL East yet, but they’re working hard at it. After blowing a 5-0 lead on Wednesday night and getting swept by the Nationals, the Mets welcomed the Cardinals to Shea Mausoleum on Thursday for a make-up game. The Cardinals, slumping badly in September and out of the race, were supposed to be beyond caring about this game, eager just to get the season over with and go home. The Mets, desperate for a win, had their ace and inspirational leader, Pedro Martinez with an extra day’s rest, ready to save the season.

And they lost. Got shut out by Joel Piniero for eight innings and by Jason Isringhausen for the ninth. Walked back to their clubhouse like zombies, their faces blank, their minds unable to comprehend what is happening to them.

The headlines say they’re on the verge of a historic collapse. With 17 games to go, they had a seven-game lead, and no team had ever blown a lead that large with so few games to play. But the headlines are wrong. The collapse has already taken place. What else can you call losing 11 of their last 16 games and giving up 10 or more runs in five of those losses?

That’s not to say they still can’t somehow win the division or the wild card or tie for the wild card or the division or both with three or more teams.

The Mets play Florida in their last three games, a team they took three of four from just last week. The Phillies take on the Nationals, the team that just swept the Mets. Over in the NL West, the Padres are playing the Brewers, who are still in contention in the NL Central, which the Cubs are doing a poor job of nailing down. Colorado and Arizona are in the mix. The possibilities have never been so bountiful this late in the season.

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But if the Mets win, that won’t cancel out the fact that they have let Philadelphia make up seven games in little more than two weeks. It won’t change the reality that the Mets are now tied for first for the first time since May 16. If they win, it will be because the Phillies suddenly forget how to win. And even if the Mets sweep the Marlins and the Phillies lose one to Washington and finish second, it’s impossible to view the Mets as anything other than what they’ve proved themselves to be — a team that doesn’t have the guts to win when it counts.

Mets fans will celebrate, and do so wildly, if they somehow manage to win the division or even sneak in as the wild card. But the party won’t last long, because the playoffs start next week, and is there any reason to think that they can beat anyone in October?

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