From JONATHAN LEHMAN

Although Mets fans accustomed to September heartache and late-inning failures may have seen last night’s gut-wrenching 9-6 loss to the Cubs coming, the defeat really was a longshot. The play-by-play rundown at the bottom of the box score features wWE, which stands for winner’s win expectancy. The Cubs were the eventual winner, and Daniel Murphy‘s hit cut their chances to 7 percent.

And that wasn’t the only moment at which the Mets had overwhelming odds to pull out the ‘W’ and maintain their one-game edge over the Brewers in the wild-card race:

— Carlos Delgado‘s third-inning grand slam, which put the Mets ahead 5-1, boosted their chances to 89 percent, and that figure rose to 92 percent after Oliver Perez retired the side in the fourth.

— When the Mets put runners on first and third with nobody out in the seventh, even though they were down 6-5, their win expectancy was 62 percent. They didn’t score.

— Following Murphy’s triple, when the Mets loaded the bases after a David Wright strikeout and intentional passes to Carlos Delgado and Carlos Beltran, Ryan Church batted with an 83 percent likelihood of a Mets win.

Church grounded into a force, the Cubs won in the 10th, and the Mets proved yet again their knack for defying the odds.