The Mets and their legion of fans hate to hear it, and they’ve been largely spared from hearing it since the ‘90s, but now it rings true again.
The Atlanta Braves did everything right. Now they’re heading to the World Series again.
Sure, the Mets have been to the World Series twice since the Braves’ last appearance in 1999, and the Braves look wholly overmatched against baseball’s conquistadors from Houston, but we said the same thing about the 2019 Nationals. The fact of the matter is that the Braves earned this trip to the Fall Classic through the sheer power of good baseball, a wildly foreign concept to their division rivals in Queens.
In getting to the Fall Classic, first the Braves had to merely qualify for the playoffs. On July 10, Atlanta lost Ronald Acuña Jr., its best player, to a torn ACL. The next morning, the standings showed Atlanta 4.5 games back of the division-leading Mets in the National League East. From that day until the end of the season, the Braves went 44-28 while the Mets continually tripped over their own shoelaces en route to a 29-45 finish. The first thing the Braves figured out was how to consistently win games down the stretch, even with the most important player in their organization on crutches.
Meanwhile, the Mets never seemed to recover physically or psychologically from Jacob deGrom’s injury. While Acuña’s immediate diagnosis signaled the end of his season, deGrom’s potential comeback lingered over the season like a deadbeat dad who swears he’s coming home but never does. Perhaps that uncertainty affected the Mets, and in a way it might have been easier on them to know right away that they’d have to weather the storm without their ace. The Braves certainly managed to take their bad news and move on accordingly. Now they’re four wins from a championship.
With Acuña out of the picture — joining Marcell Ozuna, who hasn’t played since May 25 after allegedly assaulting his wife and being arrested on two misdemeanor charges of family violence battery and simple assault, as well as a felony aggravated assault by strangulation, a charge that has since been dropped — the Braves front office acquired four outfielders who have each penned important pages in Atlanta’s story.
They swiped Joc Pederson from the Cubs on July 15 in exchange for a minor leaguer. Eddie Rosario came over on July 30. All the Braves had to give up for him was their aging panda Pablo Sandoval. Adam Duvall and Jorge Soler arrived on the same day as Rosario, instantly supplying the right-handed power that evaporated when Acuña and Ozuna were taken out of the lineup.
In their partial seasons with the Braves, Pederson, Rosario, Duvall and Soler were worth a combined 2.9 Wins Above Replacement. The Mets big in-season pickups, Javier Baez and Rich Hill, each had their moments (particularly Baez), but they ultimately were not enough to keep the ship afloat.
If you include Carlos Carrasco, who the Mets’ brass hailed as the equivalent of a major deadline acquisition when he returned from injury on July 30, two of the three moves fall squarely in the underwhelming bin. On the other hand, Pederson has three homers in the 2021 postseason, Rosario just won NLCS MVP, and Duvall and Soler knocked 30 home runs and 78 RBI down the stretch to add an improbable NL East banner to Truist Park.
Another positively un-Mets element of this Braves run is their success in clutch situations. Starting on July 15, the day Pederson arrived, Atlanta hit .285 with runners in scoring position. That was the best mark in Major League Baseball. The Mets are found tied for last on that same list, a pitiful .225 next to their name.
Let’s keep going.
The Braves’ infield, captained by Dansby Swanson at shortstop, made just 37 errors this season as a unit. The Mets’ infield kicked, whiffed and overthrew their way to 60 errors. Under the tutelage of Ron Washington — who would be an interesting candidate for the Mets’ managerial job — Atlanta boasted one of the tightest defenses in all of Major League Baseball. Capped off by Swanson’s scrapbook moment to clinch the pennant, the Braves put on a fielding clinic worthy of National League champion status.
Against the four other playoff teams, Atlanta compiled a 14-11 record, and that was before kicking Milwaukee and Los Angeles to the curb during the playoffs. Against those same four teams, the Mets were 6-20 and lost the season series to the Braves too. Despite having the worst record of any playoff team, the Braves proved that they can hang with anyone the league throws at them. The Mets showed over and over again that they have a tough go when the going gets tough, a quality that postseason-caliber teams famously do not have.
Between the inability to withstand a major injury, midseason roster adjustments that mostly fell flat, and Swiss cheese defense paired with a bad record against the NL’s elite, the 2021 Mets were everything the 2021 Braves were not.
Now the Mets have to listen to the baseball media heap praise on the Braves, a team they led by five games on Aug. 1, as they go for a championship.