NEW YORK -- The Mets completed the first half of the season on Thursday night at Citi Field, and it has been a disappointment, to say the least.

After the 3-2 loss to the Brewers, the Mets are a surprising 36-45, 17 1/2 games behind the first-place Braves in the NL East and nine games behind the Dodgers for the last Wild Card spot. It didn’t help that they lost three out of four games to Milwaukee.

“I hate when good people don’t get a return for what they are putting into it," Mets manager Buck Showalter said regarding the first-half losses. "Somehow, it’s not fair. The game is not always fair.”

This is the same Mets team that won 101 games last year and made it to the Wild Card round before losing to the Padres. No one expected the Mets to be this bad. After acquiring right-hander Justin Verlander via free agency,  New York was expected to compete with the Braves for the division title.

But there are reasons the team is so far back. It hasn't been consistent in all facets of the game. When they hit, the Mets aren’t getting length from their starters. That also means the bullpen is taxed. When the starters are going deep into the game, the offense is asleep, with the team collectively hitting .250 [154-for-616] with runners in scoring position this season.

Shortstop Francisco Lindor had a difficult time trying to figure out what was going wrong with the team. 

“If I were to give you an answer, I think it has to do with trying to do more,” he said. “When you lose games or when you are not having success, the nature of the moment is to do more, trying to make up for things. 

“I’ll give you an example: My last at-bat [in the eighth inning], I took pitch one and then the next two pitches, I wanted to hit the ball extra hard for some reason [and struck out on three pitches]. It’s just a matter of putting the ball in play and just trying to get on base, not trying to hit a two-run homer with nobody on. I still haven’t seen anybody do it.”

Right-hander Max Scherzer gave the Mets six innings while allowing two runs, but reliever Dominic Leone gave up the winning run in the top of the seventh inning when Brian Anderson hit a sacrifice fly to bring home William Contreras.  

Scherzer blamed himself for allowing Victor Caratini to tie the score at 2 with a two-run homer in the sixth. 

“Any time you lose by one, you look at what you could have done to prevent one extra run from scoring,” Scherzer said. “You are always going to look at yourself. ... It’s unfortunate that the homer kind of flipped the game a little bit. So I’m accountable for those two runs. You wish you could have gotten a zero up there. You don’t know how things would have gone. That’s baseball.”

Throughout all the losing, the team has stuck together, believing things will turn around.

“The guys haven’t [done] any excuse making or pointing fingers. They have stayed together,” Showalter said. “I harp on them all the time: We have to stay together. This thing is hard. It can turn just as quickly.”

Mets outfielder Mark Canha thought it was admirable how the team has responded to the tough times.

“We are not in a good way right now," Canha said, "but everyone shows up every day, goes about their work professionally and keeps their head down in all the messaging from staff, players and everything. It’s all hopeful."

Being positive hasn’t shown up on the field, but Canha believes the team will turn it around.

“If we are able to get out of this, we are going to look at these days and say, ‘Remember how we stayed together? Remember how hard it was and how we dug ourselves out?’ You learn from that, and we can be proud how we handled this.”