SNY spotlighted a clubhouse interview after Wednesday night’s game as if it was news. Francisco Lindor [1] said the Braves were better than the Mets. This is news in the sense that this just in: Studies Show Pleasure Preferable to Pain.
What’s the scoop here? That one of the Mets’ leading players recognized that the team that beat his 10 of 13 times in 2023 and leads his by 24 games in the standings might maintain an edge by way of head-to-head comparison? I watched all 13 Mets-Braves games this year. I’m still wondering how we won three of them.
Since Atlanta moved to the National League East in 1994, they have finished with a lesser record than New York exactly five times: 2006, 2007, 2008, 2015 and 2016. Twice the two clubs tied: 2014 and 2022, although the latter tie isn’t really recognized as such. Once 2023 is over, the Braves will be 23-5-2 in this regard, though I doubt they spend a lot of time regarding themselves vis-à-vis the Mets. Conversely, when Steve Cohen bought the franchise and pointed to the Dodgers as his role model for consistency, perhaps he should have stayed within the division for aspiration. Atlanta is about to win its sixth consecutive NL East title and 18th overall…and they didn’t even arrive here until 25 years after the division was founded.
That’s a great team over there and this one over here is not. Of the ten Met losses to the Braves this season, Tuesday night’s 3-2 would-be heartbreaker [2] (had we any heart left to break) was an exception in that it felt like it just got away or was there for the Mets’ taking. I know there were a few other close ones when the season was younger and not so obviously over, yet I was almost always permeated by the sense that the Braves were going to come along and grab them — including that dizzying night in June when the Mets took or increased a lead in five separate innings yet the game ended 13-10 in the Braves’ favor — because that’s what that team does. They’re talented, they’re deep, they’re relentless and they expect to win games. It’s what they do, it’s who they are.
Wednesday’s adios to Atlanta was close until it wasn’t, which is another hallmark of Mets-Braves games. Jose Quintana [3] struggled somewhat but kept the Mets in it until he couldn’t and they weren’t. The Mets did next to nothing against Charlie Morton, a veteran I never realize is as grizzled as he is. You couldn’t tell from his pitching. The 39-year-old (who relieved for the Braves in a September game the Mets really had to have in 2008) struck out eleven over seven innings and would have had a no-hitter going if not for the double stylings of DJ Stewart [4]. His two two-base hits and continued hot hitting burnished one of the legit feelgood stories of the dog days of August, though it felt less good when DJ stumbled after the first of them while taking a subsequent lead and got picked off second by catcher Sean Murphy.
That was in the fifth, when the score was only 1-0, Braves. By the end of the sixth, it was 5-0, Braves. Marcell Ozuna, who had a Troy Tulowitzki of a series, did damage. So did Murphy. So did pretty much every Brave. The final wound up 7-0, but the vibe was very much 21-3 from two weekends ago [5] at Citi Field. These Braves may not score plenty early, but they score frequently eventually. One saving grace is they were ahead by enough and perhaps bored enough to go down in order in the eighth inning, which meant Sean Reid-Foley [6] could claim a successful comeback from Tommy John surgery. Reid-Foley last pitched in the majors sixteen months ago, when the Braves were four-time defending NL East champions. Perhaps it was comforting for Sean to know, that for all he’s gone through in terms of rehabilitation and for all the new rules that have been codified within the sport in his absence, some things about baseball never change.
A new episode of National League Town is on tap. Fill your mug and enjoy! [7]