Mets lose to Atlanta to finish wildly lopsided season series
The Mets' Brandon Nimmo strikes out during the third inning of the team's game against Atlanta on Wednesday in Atlanta. Credit: AP/Hakim Wright Sr.
ATLANTA — The difference between the Mets and Atlanta in their 7-0 loss Wednesday night was like the distance between opposite banks of a mellow river: vast and wet, but traversable if you can find a couple of well-placed rocks and tolerate being uncomfortable.
The difference between the clubs this season, though? That is more like the Grand Canyon, an absolute chasm, a gaping hole created by a steady stream of many years of seemingly small but definitely meaningful decisions.
The narrow-turned-blowout loss for the Mets marked an opportunity to take stock of just how far away they are from where they want to be: atop the division and the league, exactly where Atlanta is.
With the season series complete, the numbers were damning. The Mets went 3-10. The aggregate score: Atlanta 96, Mets 54.
“They were better than us,” Francisco Lindor said. “Flat-out, they’re better than us. They play better than us every single time we play them.”
A year after they finished with the same 101 wins in a historically competitive NL East race, decided by a head-to-head tiebreaker in which the difference was just one game, the Mets are 24 games back of first place (and a half-game ahead of last place).
At the end of last season, the Mets were so close to Atlanta that manager Buck Showalter adjusted the standings, as depicted in a meeting room off the home clubhouse at Citi Field: Mets first, Atlanta second. They had the same record, after all, he said.
Not this time.
“We were close to being, what, one game from them last year?” Showalter said. “This year it hasn’t been the case. So we’ll have to figure out a way to make up the difference.”
The details of the finale illustrated all of the above well. Atlanta pitched and hit well; the Mets did not.
The Mets (59-69) kept it close until Atlanta (82-44) struck for a combined six runs off starter Jose Quintana and reliever Phil Bickford in the sixth and seventh innings. Vaughn Grissom had a two-run triple, aided by rightfielder DJ Stewart falling over and skidding on his face on a failed dive attempt, and Marcell Ozuna hit a two-run home run.
Ozuna went 8-for-11 with seven RBIs, four home runs and two doubles in the three-game series.
Quintana finished with an ugly line: 5 1/3 innings, five runs. He had baserunners galore — nine hits, three walks — but limited Atlanta to one run until his final frame.
That snapped his streak of 20 consecutive starts in which he did not allow more than three earned runs. It was the longest active such streak in the majors.
Showalter called Quintana’s outing “competitive.”
“Because we didn’t do anything offensively, it makes it look a little differently,” Showalter said. “The line will read as not indicative of [his performance].”
The Mets totaled three hits.
Atlanta righthander Charlie Morton dominated for seven scoreless innings with 11 strikeouts and one walk. They had two hits off of him, both doubles by Stewart.
“It’s remarkable, at his age (39), to be carrying that type of stuff,” Showalter said. “That’s as good as I’ve seen him.”
Stewart’s eventful game included getting picked off to end the top of the fifth, moments after he recorded the Mets’ first hit. He took a lead off second base but fell over and, as he tried to retreat, was thrown out by catcher Sean Murphy.
“They’re very consistent. They’re a really good team,” Lindor said. “They’re a 100-win team. So yeah. We saw last year that we were a 100-win team and this year we’re not. Things can change very quick. With that being said, we’re nowhere near [being] a 100-win team this year. We got a lot of work to do.”
Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
