Thanks to the Mets completely imploding late in a game (once again), the Braves were able to win their 5th straight game thanks to a 4-run 8th inning that that put them ahead for a 5-3 victory.
New York was in complete control of this game for the first 7 innings of this game, though. In fact, they were on top of Atlanta from the words "Play Ball," as the 3rd pitch that Alex Wood threw to leadoff hitter Curtis Granderson ended up in the left field seats for a leadoff homer. That homer ended an 0-17 streak for Granderson, who picked just a fantastic time to break out of that streak. It was fantastic for the Mets, at least. For the Braves and the vast majority of visitors to this website, it wasn't exactly a pleasant sight.
The 2nd inning didn't go much better for Atlanta, as the leadoff hitter once again reached base and eventually made it home. Chris Young singled to kick off the 2nd, and after a fly out from Juan Lagares moved Young up 90 feet, it was time for Travis d'Arnaud to come to the plate. The Mets' catcher came into this game with a paltry wRC+ of 66. That didn't matter at this point in time, because just as Granderson picked a "good" time to wake up, d'Arnaud picked a "great" time to awaken from his slumber, as he delivered a RBI double to make it 2-0 for the Mets. d'Arnaud went into this game with 165 PAs. That was his 4th double all season. I'm sorry for making you feel worse about that.
The pain continued for Alex Wood, as the Mets scored for the 3rd straight inning to kick off the game. This time, in the 3rd inning, it was the aforementioned Chris Young who brought in a runner, as his sacrifice fly brought in Daniel Murphy, who picked up where he left off on his last visit to Turner Field with a 2-4 day at the plate. At this point, it seemed like Alex Wood was gonna have one of those bad outings and the Mets were just gonna score in every inning. Luckily for us, that wasn't the case as Wood recovered nicely to put in 3 more solid innings of work for 6.0 IP, 7 Ks, and only 1 BB.
On the other side of the coin, the Braves didn't light up their "R" column of the scoreboard until the bottom of the 5th, which is when Freddie Freeman continued his nice run against the Mets with a sacrifice fly that brought in B.J. Upton to cut the Mets' lead down to 2 with a score of 3-1. Other than that, the Braves just couldn't get an extended rally going against Zack Wheeler, despite Wheeler dealing out 5 free passes on the night. Other than that, Wheeler did a good job of mitigating whatever trouble he got into over the 6.1 innings that he did pitch.
The Mets had to have been pretty happy with the way that their starter pitched tonight. Conversely, they'd have to be livid with how the defense as the whole looked in the fateful bottom of the 8th because man, oh man, they looked some kind of bad.
In the 8th, Jeurys Familia entered the game for some relief work. The Braves started this inning off with plenty of promise, as the venerable duo of Justin Upton and Jason Heyward both reached base with singles to get 2 ducks on the pond for Chris Johnson. That's when the Mets basically said " Hold this W for us, Braves, because we don't want it." Let's run down the errors and their consequences:
- Error #1: Familia makes an error on a fielder's choice. Instead of a backbreaking double play, the Braves now have the bases loaded with none out for Tommy La Stella.
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Error #2: After TLS comes up huge by slapping the ball up the middle of the infield for a single that made it 3-2, a rare defensive botch from Juan Lagares as he collected TLS' hit allows Heyward to score the game-tying run.
<iframe src='http://m.mlb.com/shared/video/embed/embed.html?content_id=34182217&topic_id=6479266&width=400&height=224&property=mlb' width='400' height='224' frameborder='0'>Your browser does not support iframes.</iframe> - Error #3: Later in the inning with 2 out, Andrelton Simmons grounds to Eric Campbell at 3rd. Campbell proceeds to play basketball with a baseball. That's not optimal defense. Consequently, Chris Johnson makes it home to 3rd for the go-ahead run.
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