After another blowout victory on Monday, the Atlanta Braves entered Tuesday’s match-up with the New York Mets riding high on the strength of 10 wins in 11 games. In short order, however, it was clear that game two of the three-game set wasn’t going according to plan and, in the end, the Braves suffered a 10-2 loss at the hands of Jacob deGrom and the Mets.
Julio Teheran, on the mound for Atlanta, managed to navigate the first two innings of the night in scoreless fashion but trouble arrived in the third. The veteran right-hander retired only one of the first seven batters in the inning, allowing three doubles and two singles, and the resulting damage was a 4-0 lead for New York.
Later, Teheran allowed a two-run home run to Pete Alonso in the fourth inning, putting the Braves behind by a 6-0 margin and that was basically the end of the competitive portion of the night. From there, Touki Toussaint struggled in his second inning of work, allowing two runs in the sixth, and Atlanta’s deficit grew to 8-0 with only three innings remaining. Finally, the Mets threw a pair of additional haymakers with home runs in the eighth and ninth, bringing the margin to a whopping ten runs.
While the run prevention was problematic throughout the night, Atlanta’s offense also fell flat for the first time in quite a while. deGrom was thoroughly dominant for more than eight innings before Freddie Freeman and Josh Donaldson broke the spell with solo home runs in the ninth, and the Cy Young winner finished with 10 strikeouts while allowing only five base-runners over 8.1 innings.
In the end, there were some mild fireworks in the final moments of an otherwise uninspiring game and Brian Snitker’s team ran into a buzzsaw on Tuesday evening. The Braves and Mets will finish the three-game series on Wednesday evening, with Max Fried scheduled to face off against Steven Matz.
Stay tuned.