Celebrate Bad Times, Come On!

ATLANTA (FAF) — Domestic champagne flowed freely, dousing the freshly issued hats and t-shirts worn in the visiting clubhouse by celebratory New York Mets players Tuesday night, as a baseball team raucously toasted its bad fortune.

It’s not every day when a 59-68 ballclub gets to celebrate, but a 3-2 loss that on its surface appeared agonizing served as the occasion for it. Thus, the issuing of shirts emblazoned with the team’s rallying cry of IT JUST DOESN’T MATTER, adopted from the 1979 Bill Murray movie Meatballs, and the caps that feature an image of Mr. Met shrugging.

The Mojo Risin’ of 2023.

“That kind of loss,” manager Buck Showalter said, “is the kind of loss that will absolutely punch you in your gut in a tight pennant or playoff race, but these guys don’t have to worry, which is in itself kind of a cause for celebration. Imagine how bad this loss would feel if any of this mattered anymore.”

Showalter was referring to the defeat completed just moments earlier at Truist Field, where the first-place Braves held on to down the fourth-place Mets by a run despite Mets pitchers escaping several jams and Mets batters forging a handful of scoring opportunities that ultimately went by the wayside.

“A game of this magnitude, coming up short like that, would have absolutely killed us, absolutely slayed us,” said first baseman Pete Alonso, who went 0-for-3 with a hit-by-pitch. “I mean, last year when we came in here and they handed us our lunch, I wasn’t even in the mood for a pancake single play, let alone all three. Tonight, when I get back to the hotel, I’m probably gonna order some room service.”

When the season began, the Mets and Braves were projected to duel for the National League East crown just as they had in 2022, when the Mets led the division most of the season, only to be swept in this same ballpark on the schedule’s final weekend. New York lost the East on a tiebreaker despite both clubs holding identical 101-61 records. Each team would be eliminated in its respective first postseason series.

While the Braves’ regular-season momentum from last season never paused, the Mets fell out of divisional contention in 2023 once they were swept again by Atlanta this June. “I guess the Wild Card standings say we still have an outside chance,” Showalter said, as his players let loose, “but that’s more of a wild canard. What are we — seven games out with 35 to play, something like that? Our analytics folks used to send me updated probabilities and percentages about where we stood relative to everybody else. I asked them to stop.”

The Mets indeed remain on the fringes of a scramble for the National League’s final playoff spot, but the players who were whooping it up didn’t seem to let that fact get them down.

“Oh, this would have been a terrible night, brutal,” said Francisco Lindor, who doubled, walked, stole a base and scored on a Daniel Vogelbach homer. “Imagine losing to the Braves by one run with all those chances, especially in the ninth, and imagine trying to get up and do it again tomorrow. Now our imaginations can rest. It’s just another game.”

The Mets sealed their 68th loss of the season against 59 wins in a ninth inning that would have gone down as one of the worst of the year had there been much in the way of competitive implications. Vogelbach led off by walking on four pitches versus Atlanta closer Rafael Iglesias. With Tim Locastro pinch-running for Vogelbach, DJ Stewart singled to center, but not deep enough to risk sending the speedy Locastro to third, lest strong-armed Michael Harris II throw him out attempting to advance. Thus, Locastro stood at second much as Vogelbach might have.

Francisco Alvarez, mired in a deep slump, came to bat with runners on first and second, continuing his encouraging pattern of at least making opposing pitchers work. The rookie ran a full count with the bases loaded in the fourth before lining out to end that inning versus Brave starter and winner Bryce Elder. In the ninth, Alvarez fouled off three pitches before grounding sharply to third base, where Austin Riley availed himself of an easy force play on Locastro before throwing across the diamond to retire Alvarez. In doing so, Riley passed on a potential triple play opportunity, as he could have conceivably gotten Stewart at second, with time left for a relay to first, but he opted for the sure two outs.

Rafael Ortega, who earlier came close to an extra-base hit on a ball to the right field wall that struck the padding inches from the foul line, grounded to shortstop Orlando Arcia to end the game and set off the Mets’ line of handshakes and hugs.

With the Phillies’ walkoff win at home versus the Giants, the Braves maintained their 12½-game lead in the NL East.

“Personally, I’m bothered that I couldn’t do a little better and last a little longer,” said starting pitcher Tylor Megill, who absorbed the loss after persevering four-and-two-thirds innings while giving up three runs on homers to Eddie Rosario and Marcell Ozuna, but otherwise escaped the damage that allowing eight hits and two walks along with unleashing four wild pitches might imply. “Yet I’m really happy for us as a team. We don’t have to be bothered by what, under circumstances like last year’s race, would be a real [expletive] of a loss. We should feel good about that.”

Megill left Braves in scoring position in each of the four innings he completed, while the first reliever to follow the righty out of the Mets’ bullpen, recent acquisition Adam Kolarek, grounded out Nicky Lopez to end the first-and-second threat Megill bequeathed him in the fifth. When the Mets began the sixth with Lindor’s double and Vogelbach’s eleventh home run of the season to cut Atlanta’s lead to 3-2, a game that played as frustrating for the New Yorkers turned to perhaps promising. Yet despite the continued effective relief pitching of Kolarek, Reed Garrett and Brooks Raley, a trio who combined for three-and-a-third scoreless innings, the Mets never could plate the tying run. New York’s offense was 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position, and not even keeping former Met Travis d’Arnaud hitless in four at-bats despite the former Met hitting the ball hard a couple of times, augured an upturn for the visitors.

“They’re celebrating over there, huh?” d’Arnaud, a lifetime .326 hitter versus his old team, asked in the Brave clubhouse. “Yeah, I get it. We had some bad years when I was there, though not usually so bad that we were simply relieved that the losing didn’t hurt as much as it could have. You do what you can to get through a long season sometimes.”

D’Arnaud paused and pointed to his teammates calmly dressing after another victory. “The guys in here,” the veteran catcher said, “probably don’t know what it’s like. All they do is win. It’s been like that since I got here” in 2020. Atlanta, owner of the best record in baseball, is on pace for its sixth consecutive division title.

“We have great fans,” d’Arnaud added, “but so do the Mets. I feel bad for those people if the best they can feel tonight is that a tough loss would have been a lot worse had it mattered more.”