Curtis Granderson was the man of the hour for the Mets this evening, as his two home runs ended up powering New York to a 6-3 victory over the Braves in the opening game of this weekend series.
Granderson's granderslam (I'm sorry) came in the second inning, but the Braves (and Bud Norris in particular) are probably going to seriously regret the way that the bases ended up getting loaded. With one out, Norris dealt two consecutive free passes and then was given credit for an error when he made a meal out of a bunt from Matt Harvey, of all people. This brought Granderson to bat with the bases loaded, and when Norris gave him a 93-mph fastball, Granderson made no mistake with it and sent it flying into the right field seats for his first grand slam since 2012.
To the Braves credit, they did deliver an immediate response in the bottom half of the second inning. Kelly Johnson and Mallex Smith both delivered RBI singles in this frame to cut New York's lead in half and assuage any concerns about this game possibly turning into a nasty blowout.
The fourth inning ended up being Bud Norris' final frame of the evening, and his nemesis from the second inning struck him again in this inning as well. Granderson's second dinger of the night landed a few seats away from where the first one landed, but it only counted for one instead of four, so there's your silver lining. The homer made it 5-2 at that point, and Norris left the game after he finished this frame. The final line for Norris ended up being 4 IP, 5 H, 5 ER, 2 BB, and 4 Ks. That's not what you want to see, especially when you consider that the bullpen came into this game a tad bit on the depleted side after doing plenty of work over this past week.
Fortunately, Casey Kelly was able to eat up three innings once he entered the game. Aside from giving up an RBI double to Yoenis Cespedes in the seventh inning, Kelly did a pretty good job and gave a good account of himself in his Atlanta Braves debut.
Adonis Garcia responded in the bottom of the seventh inning with an RBI single to make it 6-3 Mets, but that was as close as the Braves would get before rain rolled into Turner Field and delayed the game for nearly an hour. Once the rain cleared out and the two teams resumed play, not much changed. The Braves were unable to mount a comeback, and Jeurys Familia dusted off the top of Atlanta's order in the 9th to finish off loss #12 of the season for the Braves.
Source: FanGraphs