LAS VEGAS — Mets pitching wasn’t supposed to fall apart like that, to drop from the best in baseball to fifth from the bottom in a flash. Really, nobody’s pitching should.

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To plummet from an MLB-leading 2.80 ERA on June 12, when the Mets looked like a World Series favorite, to a $340 million club that couldn’t outlast the plucky Cincinnati Reds from a microscopic market is practically unprecedented.

The vaunted Mets pitching lab was allegedly so good they guarded their info like gold, their old pitching coach, Jeremy Hefner, so respected he was snapped up by their rival Braves. So I’ll go out on a ledge and suggest this theory for their historic fall: Mets pitchers weren’t and aren’t good enough.

The Mets had “a bunch of fours and fives,” sniffed a rival executive, which is even harsher than I’d put it.