ATLANTA — The Mets’ hard-to-believe slapstick start to this season has begged a question: Have we ever seen anything like this before? This will surely be an incomplete list because brutality, much like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder. And there are two things at work that tend to make assessments like this incomplete:

One is recency bias. We tend to lament (or celebrate) with greater fury that which is fresh in our memory. And the other is simpler: We tend to purge the Bad Stuff from our minds. So if there are any glaring holes here, please feel free to reach out and we’ll rectify next time. For now, these are the basic requirements for this list:

1. High preseason expectations.

2. A failure to not only live up to those prognostications, but to also fall comically below basic professional competence.

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