MIAMI — Team owner Steve Cohen certainly could have found a better use for the $340 million in payroll he sunk into this disaster.
The Mets were removed from their misery on Sunday, ending a nosedive that began in June and accelerated over these final weeks of the regular season, losing 4-0 to the Marlins at loanDepot park to finish a victory short of the postseason.
Only adding to the hurt, the Reds lost 4-2 to the Brewers. A Mets victory in this regular-season finale would have catapulted them into the playoffs.
A team built to compete for the World Series won’t be participating in the postseason, after failing to clinch the NL’s third wild card.
That spot is reserved for the Reds, who received the invitation based on the tiebreaker of winning the season series against the Mets.
The Mets went meekly, finishing 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position with 10 runners left on base.
Charles Wenzelberg/New York Post
Manager Carlos Mendoza went with a bullpen game — starter Sean Manaea pitched only 1 ²/₃ innings — and saw his team fall into a four-run deficit in the fourth inning from which it never recovered.
The Mets, who spent 83 days in first place in the NL East, went 38-55 beginning on June 13 to finish the season. It was a second half marred mostly by awful starting pitching.
Charles Wenzelberg/New York Post
The main culprits were Kodai Senga, David Peterson and Manaea, all of whom cratered — Senga spent most of the regular season’s final month in the minor leagues attempting to remedy his woes.
It was a Mets collapse that included a 7-14 finish, allowing the Reds to rally for the wild-card berth. The Mets led the Reds by six games after winning on Sept. 5 in Cincinnati, but the Reds went 13-8 over the final stretch as the Mets sputtered.
This collapse was reminiscent of nosedives that kept the Mets from reaching the playoffs in 2007 and ’08, both seasons ending with final day losses to the Marlins.
On this day Manaea faced six batters in his start and retired four. He was removed in the second inning after consecutive walks to Connor Norby and Eric Wagaman before Huascar Brazobán was summoned to get the final out in the inning.
The lefty Manaea, who missed the first half of the season rehabbing from an oblique strain — and had further complications with a loose body in his pitching elbow — finished with a 5.64 ERA in 15 appearances after returning to the Mets on a three-year contract worth $75 million.
The Marlins jumped on a merry-go-round of relievers in the fourth inning to place the Mets in a 4-0 hole. Wagaman doubled against Ryne Stanek to drive in a run charged to Brooks Raley before Brian Navaretto’s double scored a second run.
Tyler Rogers surrendered an RBI triple to Javier Sanoja before Xavier Edwards brought in the inning’s fourth run with a single.
The Mets loaded the bases in the fifth on three walks before Pete Alonso hit a shot to left 115.9 mph — the hardest ball any Mets player has hit all season — that was caught by Sanoja for the final out. Sanoja celebrated with a dance in the outfield.
Edwin Díaz, who began warming up in the bullpen in the fourth, entered to start the fifth and pitched two scoreless innings to stabilize the situation, but the Mets never got rolling.
Their last gasp was in the eighth, when Alonso singled and Vientos walked before Jeff McNeil and Francisco Alvarez struck out in succession.
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