ATLANTA — No one on the infield moved at the booming noise of Matt Olson launching yet another ball. By that point, they had seen it before. Another Braves home run, only this time it was the dagger in a series for New York defined by dilapidation and demoralization.
The Mets lost Sunday, 5-3, to the Braves with Olson’s solo home run in the sixth inning providing the final margin in a game that all but decided a division that for so long belonged to New York until Atlanta snatched it away.
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When Braves closer Kenley Jansen delivered the first strike of the ninth inning, fans at Truist Park started chanting, “Sweep! Sweep! Sweep!” It was the one outcome New York absolutely had to avoid. With three games left, the Braves have a two-game lead and own the season series tiebreaker. The only way the Mets win the NL East is if they sweep the Nationals this week and the Braves lose all three of their games to the Marlins, and you don’t need any website projections to tell you how low the chances are of that happening.
Maybe manager Buck Showalter will be proven right when he said, “If I know these guys, they will rebound and make somebody feel their pain.” After all, the month of October just started, but it hasn’t felt that way with the playoffs not commencing until Friday. And the Mets, up until this series with Atlanta, were in a position to take the Wild Card Series weekend off. They owned the division for six months of baseball’s marathon season only for the Braves to be claiming it over the final few days. It stings.
Braves 5, Mets 3: It's a sweep, the one outcome the Mets absolutely had to avoid. Now, they are all but assured of having to play in a wild card series. New York is 98-61.
— Will Sammon (@WillSammon) October 3, 2022
“Tip your cap,” Pete Alonso said as he pretended to do just that inside the Mets clubhouse. “They just flat-out beat us this weekend. They did. I thought we played well. They just played better.”
All true words, and there’s even more to the story.
All weekend, the series played out in ways that detailed the differences between the Braves and Mets while spelling out how one of these strong teams was able to rise to the occasion while the other fumbled the opportunity.
The biggest one was the offensive approach. For Atlanta, it wasn’t just Olson hitting home runs. Austin Riley and Dansby Swanson also helped the Braves power through the Mets’ biggest strength, their starting pitching trio of Jacob deGrom, Max Scherzer and Chris Bassitt. On Sunday, Bassitt lasted just 2 2/3 innings and allowed four runs, three walks and three hits. After being unable to play the role of stopper following the deGrom and Scherzer losses, Bassitt didn’t use many words in detailing his struggles. “Pretty much beat myself,” he said.
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From the beginning, the veteran’s command was uncharacteristically poor. He got ahead 0-2 to Travis d’Arnaud in the third inning only for the catcher to work the count even and, on the eighth pitch of the at-bat, hit a two-run single. Turns out, the Braves can score that way, too. But just as they did the two nights prior, they also hit multiple home runs.
It’s a formula that helps lineups in October against ace pitchers from playoff teams, who aren’t prone to making the number of mistakes necessary for long innings, and it’s something the Mets haven’t yet mastered. They’re not really built to. They hit two home runs Sunday but went cold after their first 15 plate appearances. Time and again, the Mets never got the big hit they needed. On Sunday, for example, the Mets had first and third with none out in the third inning after already scoring two in the frame, but could not further capitalize.
Unlike the Braves, the Mets’ offensive stars, Alonso and Francisco Lindor, failed to deliver a single extra-base hit in the series. Their most consistent hitter was Jeff McNeil, who went 3 for 5 with a home run on Sunday to raise his batting average to .326. Beyond Alonso and Lindor, with Starling Marte (fractured finger) out, there isn’t a whole lot of thump in the Mets’ lineup.
To help remedy that issue, the Mets called up prospect Francisco Álvarez on Friday. It ended up highlighting another difference between the Mets and Braves. Atlanta called up a couple of their best prospects early in the season, installing them into key roles. Those players, like Michael Harris II, thrived, with Harris making a few dazzling plays defensively over the weekend. Álvarez, on the other hand, was put in the tough spot of debuting in the biggest series of the season. He went 0 for 8 with three strikeouts and struck out swinging as a pinch hitter for Daniel Vogelbach with a runner on in the fifth inning.
The Mets were in the position of relying on Álvarez off the bench — Mark Vientos, who is 4 for 30 on the season, also failed to come through in a pinch-hit situation — because they didn’t improve their club enough at the trade deadline. Conversely, Braves reliever Raisel Iglesias pitched three scoreless innings in the series. He was one of Atlanta’s acquisitions. The Mets could’ve added more in the bullpen, too, and if they had, they wouldn’t have had to turn to starters-turned-relievers like Tylor Megill earlier in the series.
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The Mets’ warts got exposed in this series. Heading into the playoffs, the bullpen, the offense and, yes, even the starting pitching are concerns. That’s especially true now that the team almost certainly faces a wild-card series.
“It doesn’t feel the best, to be honest with you,” Alonso said. “We still have three games left in the regular season. We’re still going to the postseason. That doesn’t change. There’s a lot of learning points that we can take from this series moving forward.
“I thought we played well, but I mean, the Braves, they played better.”
Added Lindor, “They outplayed us.”
(Photo: Larry Robinson / USA Today)
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