The New York Mets' offensive struggles have hit a new low, and a glaring trend is making a bad situation worse. In the top of the ninth inning Tuesday night, with a chance to snap a six-game skid against the Dodgers, the heart of the order completely unraveled.

Facing reliever Alex Vesia, Jorge Polanco, Bo Bichette, and Francisco Alvarez struck out on just 10 pitches. The most damning stat? Only one of those pitches was actually in the strike zone. The trio chased eight pitches outside the zone, swinging and missing at seven of them, to seal a 2-1 loss—the Mets' seventh consecutive defeat.

"Ultra aggressive," manager Carlos Mendoza said postgame, pinpointing the issue. "We just went out of the strike zone... It’s hard to score in situations like that." This impatience is crippling an offense already in a deep freeze. Since the eighth inning last Saturday, a span of 29 innings, the Mets have managed just one run on 11 hits.

While Francisco Lindor briefly ended a 20-inning scoreless drought with a first-inning homer off Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the bats fell silent again immediately after. The trend of abandoning plate discipline in high-leverage moments is a recipe for disaster, especially with a matchup against Shohei Ohtani and the Dodgers looming. For a team searching for any spark, rediscovering a selective approach at the plate isn't just a suggestion—it's an urgent necessity.