MLB

AMAZIN’LY AVERAGE

Just call them The Middlin’ Mets.

After forking over a whole lot of millions in the offseason, the Wilpons are getting a whole lot of mediocrity in return. At this rate, a team built with the World Series in mind will be lucky to claim the NL wild card.

How pedestrian and disappointing is the league-high $140 million lineup assembled by GM Omar Minaya?

Consider that the Mets awoke on June 10 last year to find themselves 36-24 and holding a 31/2-game lead in the NL East standings.

Exactly one year later, they are in fourth place at 30-32 and already a whopping 7 1/2 games behind the surging, first-place Phillies. That’s the club’s largest deficit since Sept. 30, 2005, when the Mets were eight games out.

The Mets’ record in that one-year span is 82-82 – the definition of ordinary.

“You wonder sometimes what’s going on around here,” left fielder Moises Alou said after Sunday’s crushing, 8-6 loss in San Diego completed a four-game sweep by the Padres.

Unfortunately for manager Willie Randolph, who might soon take the fall for the Mets’ maddening inconsistency despite receiving a reprieve from management two weeks ago, Alou is considered one of the problems.

Prone to injury (he already has been on the disabled list twice this season) and with his best years well behind him at age 41, Alou epitomizes to angry Mets fans the brittle, over-the-hill roster they accuse Minaya of foisting on Randolph.

That accusation doesn’t seem entirely fair, considering 36-year-old Pedro Martinez is the only starting pitcher over the age of 30 and position players David Wright and Jose Reyes (both 25) are two of the brightest young stars in the game.

But it’s not just Alou. With Carlos Delgado flailing away at age 35 and the four-year, $32 million deal given to hobbled, 32-year-old second baseman Luis Castillo, Minaya’s growing legion of detractors hardly considers it a surprise the Mets are hovering around .500.

Even Randolph is starting to lose patience with his team’s inability to get hot and stay that way.

“I keep feeling like we’re going to take off and play the way we’re capable of playing, but we keep doing the moonwalk – back and forth,” he said before Billy Wagner’s eighth-inning meltdown Sunday completed a 2-5 West Coast trip.

While Randolph has reason to fear for his job, his players are starting to fear for their season with the streaking Phillies picking up where they left off last year. Philadelphia has won 12 of 14 after completing a three-game sweep in Atlanta.

The Mets will return from yesterday’s off day to face the unenviable task of three games against the West-leading Diamondbacks and their fearsome pitching lineup of Micah Owings (6-4), Brandon Webb (11-2) and Dan Haren (6-4).

Wagner said the four weekend losses to the Padres – who went into the series 24-37 and were without injured ace Jake Peavy – should serve as an alarm bell.

“San Diego’s not an upper-echelon team, and we just got swept by them,” Wagner said. “I’m definitely concerned. We need to start winning baseball games.”

Randolph is pleading for patience.

“I know people don’t want to hear that it’s early, but it is,” he said. “There’s a hundred games to go. That’s a lot of baseball, man. We’ve seen leads change real quick. No one should be thinking about deficits right now. We just need to think about good, solid baseball.”

For Randolph’s sake, the Mets had better start playing some of that soon.

bhubbuch@nypost.com