ATLANTA — Drew Smith limped slightly as he walked around the Mets' clubhouse late Monday night. As Smith sat down at his locker, his teammate Brooks Lally came over to check on him. Smith rolled up the right leg of his pants and showed Reilly the bruise he got from the bottom of the eighth inning of the Braves' 8-7 win. This was at the cost of slamming into a padded railing and hitting a television camera with his foot.
It may not be an exaggeration to say that the Mets did not survive this game, but rather did not win. The Mets, facing their longtime rivals in the National League East, relied on Brandon Nimmo's two game-tying home runs to come back from behind multiple times, and DJ Stewart's improbable game-winning shot took the lead for good. Then they endured for the rest of their lives.
As the lights went out at SunTrust Park and Braves fans lit up their phones and screamed, Smith and Jorge Lopez held off a late-game attack from one of the sport's toughest teams. Ta.
“Honestly, I was so nervous here that I didn't even want to play anymore,” reliever Reid Garrett said from the visiting clubhouse. “I'm worried. I'm excited. I mean, we're here to win.”
If coach Carlos Mendoza had written the script before the game, this wouldn't have happened. In many ways, the Mets are still recovering from their season-opening homestand, which included two overtime games and three rain cancellations, forcing a doubleheader on the road. After three games in Cincinnati, Mendoza will rely heavily on his most powerful reliever. Mendoza entered Monday with a firm determination to avoid using Edwin Diaz, Adam Ottavino and Larry because he didn't want to overwork his arm early in the season.
Further complicating matters, four of the Mets' top nine starting pitchers were on the disabled list, with a fifth quarantined in the minors, so less than a week into the season, the Mets It was the fact that he was forced to become a free agent. Julio Teheran's debut against his old team on Monday did not go well, allowing four runs in three innings and recording only eight outs overall. By the end of the third inning, the Mets' expected win rate had dropped to 13 percent.
However, Nimmo hit a three-run homer off Charlie Morton in the fifth inning to tie the game, and in the seventh he hit a solo shot to tie it again. After one inning, after Garrett recorded the last of seven outs and retired to the clubhouse, Stewart was little used as a bench player, going 0-for-12 on the season and would have already been removed from the roster if J.D. Martinez had been there. It might have been. He was fit enough to join the Mets in Atlanta, but he hit the go-ahead two-run homer over the center field fence and into a beautiful pool.
Stewart said afterward, “I've never played in the postseason, but I can imagine what it's like.”
The Braves are a notable early-season litmus test for the Mets almost every year. Even after Stewart's home run, Atlanta continued to attack Smith and Lopez in at-bat after at-bat. In the 8th inning, Smith felt pain in his foot and ended up in a pinch with the bases loaded, and in the 9th inning, Lopez became a pinch hitter and hit a leadoff double in the opposite direction. When the next batter, Marcell Ozuna, sent the ball onto the warning track, Tyrone Taylor had to step off his feet to catch it. Michael Harris II followed with an RBI, stealing second base and putting the tying run into scoring position.
Finally, as the announced crowd of 37,538 continued to roar, Smith said he had to turn up the volume on his pitch com device just to hear the call from the catcher — Travis d'Arnaud to right-center field. A field where he hit a sharp fly ball 373 feet. Starling Marte sprinted after it almost to the fence.
“I don't know all of a sudden,” Mendoza said. “But once Marte arrived at camp, [under it], shake hands. ”
Nimmo spoke to his team in the clubhouse after the game, noting the Mets' 0-5 start to the season and the struggles of individual players, including himself, Francisco Lindor, Jeff McNeil and Stewart. Things are starting to change for all of them, and as a result, the Mets have won four of their last five games, including against a team that rarely wins when they need to.
“It's nice to be able to do what they've done for us a few times,” Nimmo said of the Mets' first four-run comeback in eight years in Atlanta. “They're a really great team. They never quit. … We're just trying to hold them back as long as possible.”