PHILADELPHIA — Their wild-card position has not changed, but the Mets’ trajectory has, dramatically.

A team that had been meandering — certainly not cruising, but at least making some progress as recently as last week — has transitioned into a full-on nosedive.

Wednesday’s 11-3 blowout by the Phillies was the fifth straight Mets loss and laid bare many of the problems plaguing the club at the moment: bats helpless against quality pitching, veteran starting pitchers unable to deliver length (and often quality) and a post-trade deadline bullpen that was hyped as super but has been just standard.

But no matter how hard the Mets seem to be trying, they have been unable to lose much ground in the wild-card race. A Giants defeat ensured Carlos Mendoza’s group remained in control of the final NL playoff spot by two games.

There is time — 16 games — for the Mets (76-70) to resume course, clinch a wild card and enter October with momentum.

But there is also little evidence that a turnaround will arrive for a team that was the best in baseball at 45-24 on June 12, and has spent the following three months sleepwalking and recently flat-out collapsing, including during a series at Citizens Bank Park in which they have been pounded 21-6 in the first three games, with Thursday’s finale remaining.

“People want to figure this out and really put our best baseball in front of us. I think there’s a belief that we will,” said Clay Holmes, who lasted just four-plus innings in which he was charged with four runs. “There’s no doubt we’re super talented. We still believe we have what it takes.”

There is not an issue with belief or with preparedness or with effort, according to manager Carlos Mendoza and just about everyone in the clubhouse.

But the most expensive Mets team ever, which on paper significantly improved from last year’s NLCS trip, has been prone to slumps that feel as if they do not end.

“I don’t know how many times we’ve gotten into streaks like this where nothing seems to be working for us,” Mendoza said after a club that is six games above .500 lost at least five straight for a third time.

A lineup that fired on all cylinders in August has backfired on all cylinders during this skid.

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After being mesmerized by Cristopher Sánchez’s sinker and changeup for six one-run, four-hit, six-strikeout innings, Mets hitters have been throttled by four solid-to-excellent starting arms in a row. Hunter Greene, Aaron Nola, Ranger Suárez and Sánchez have held Juan Soto & Co. to three runs and 12 hits in 25 innings with 30 strikeouts.

“You’ve got to stay optimistic,” said Francisco Lindor, who is in an 0-for-15 slide. “You’ve got to fight for each other, like everyone here is doing. But at the end of the day, we’ve just got to play better.

“I have to play better. I haven’t got a hit this series.”

With such silence against starting pitchers, games and hopes tend to end early, which again was the case Wednesday.

Holmes’ nightmarish 29-pitch, two-run first inning put the Mets in an immediate hole that never was threatened.

The Mets managed their first run in the fourth — when Starling Marte drove in Soto — but apart from a Soto homer in the eighth and a meaningless score in the ninth, that was the last sign of life from a flat-lining attack.

On this night, even an offensive outburst would not have sufficed. After a few quiet innings against Holmes, the Phillies awoke in the fifth, two hits and a run knocking Holmes from the game. Gregory Soto entered and allowed an RBI single to Max Kepler before collapsing in the next inning.

A four-run, nine-batter sixth removed any trace of doubt. Two big Phillies rallies began not with their own power but with Mets imprecision, Soto drilling Harrison Bader, serving up a single to Kyle Schwarber and plunking J.T. Realmuto — the fourth Phillies batter who was hit by a pitch.

And then the damage arrived in the form of a Brandon Marsh RBI single and Kepler’s two-run single.

“That fastball was flat today, and they took advantage of it,” Mendoza said of Soto, who with Ryan Helsley (who allowed two runs in the eighth) was supposed to be part of the bullpen solution.

The rout was on, and the Mets have rarely looked more off.

“We still have a decision that we can make the year look completely different,” Lindor said, “and everyone here is pushing toward that.”