Mets Take The Series From The Braves In Atlanta

Mets Power Combined With Chris Bassitt Beat The Braves By Rich Coutinho, The New York Extra/TheNYExtra.com

When The Mets arrived In Atlanta, they led the World Champions by 1.5 games in the NL East and many of the so-called experts expected the Braves to roll past the Mets into first place in the NL East but apparently the Mets never got the memo taking 2 of 3 and leaving town with a 2.5 game lead heading into the final weekend before the All-Star break.

And they did it with outstanding starting pitching as Max Scherzer controlled the red-hot Brave bats and yesterday Chris Bassitt held those bats in check as well. In the one game the Mets lost, David Peterson gave the Mets a very representative start as well before the Braves rallied to win the game.

And this was all done without the Braves seeing Jacob deGrom who is inching closer to a post All-Star break return which will make this rotation even better. Add in Carlos Carrasco and Taijuan Walker and you can see why this Met team is in first place in the NL East.

From an offensive standpoint, we saw a team missing two All-Stars in Jeff McNeil and Starling Marte as well as James McCann who made the Braves 3 best starting pitchers work feverishly to get out of innings lifting their pitch counts so high, they were forced out of the game much earlier than Braves manager Brian Snitker would like.

The Braves saw firsthand how deep this Met team is as Luis Guillorme got big hits including an RBI hit that plated a real big insurance run in the series finale. And the Mets are now 12-3 in rubber games in series this year which further illustrates a resiliency we have seen all year.

This NL East race will likely have more twists and turns than a country road, but the Mets illustrated that a 27-19 road record coupled with a 28-22 record versus teams over 500 is not a mirage–it is a reality the rest of the baseball world must contend with every time they play the Mets.

Add in the fact that the Mets own a 55-34 record with a great record inside the NL East of 28-12 and in the past few years the team that wins this division exercises a search and destroy mission of their NL East opponents which the Mets have clearly done in the season’s first 89 games.

But more importantly, they took a series from the Braves despite the fact most of the negative souls on social media thought would be a 3-day swan song for the team. And let’s face facts–this is not 2021 because the players on this roster that were added in the off-season spell the word Winner with capital W. And I am sure the Mets leave town putting that fact in the minds of The World Champions.