The crowd was a bit sleepy. The Mets were even sleepier.
The team from Queens still controls its own destiny, but if the Mets are going to continue to play like they did Tuesday night, they may as well make plans for the wild-card round, in which they’d likely face the Padres, who have recently awakened from their own slumber.
The Mets’ somnambulant effort resulted in a 6-4 loss to the Marlins, who certainly didn’t look like the team that runs neck and neck with the Pirates at the bottom of all major hitting categories in the National League. The loss dropped the Mets back into a tie at the top of the National League East with the Braves (8-2 winners over the Nationals), who once trailed the division by 10 ½ games and raised the specter that they would get over on the Mets again.
While the Mets hold a 9-7 edge in the season series, the Braves hold a few other advantages. Most obviously, they are the defending World Series champs. The last time the Mets won the World Series was in 1986 (or 5747 on the Jewish calendar, it was after all Rosh Hashanah on Tuesday). That’s long enough ago that it was before every Met save Max Scherzer, Adam Ottavino and Darin Ruf was born.
But perhaps even more vital at the moment, the Mets have to travel after their game Wednesday to Atlanta for a three-game series that has a decent chance to decide things. Complicating matters, a hurricane that was last headed for the Gulf Coast is expected to drench the Atlanta area later this week, putting some of the series in peril and raising suspicions on the part of some Mets that the Braves won’t do the right thing before they actually do anything at all. One possibility might be to move the series a drier spot, but no home team likes to give up the gate.
That is the way of the intradivision rivalry that mostly has been dominated by the Braves since Chipper Jones came into the league more than a generation ago. Mets fans used to taunt him with chants of “Lar-ry.” Of course, it never worked, as Larry Wayne Jones Jr. kept dismantling the Mets. He got the final word, crushing the Mets in the 1999 NLCS, and later naming his first-born child Shea.
For those with even better memories, there was the time Atlanta manager Bobby Cox, on the day after the Mets’ 2002 pot issue came to light on the pages of Newsday, sent a light-hitting reliever with the last name “Bong” up to bat. Cox later claimed that was a coincidence. But we think we know better.
Even when the Mets seemed to put one over on the Braves, such as when they signed away future Hall of Famer Tom Glavine, it didn’t work out well. Glavine built his Cooperstown career in Atlanta, and all he’s recalled for in Queens is allowing seven runs in the first inning to the then Marlins on Sept. 30, 2007, with the postseason on the line. That and chipping a tooth during a rough New York City cab ride.
Anyway, it seems the Braves always get the last laugh.
No one was smiling at Citi Field in a sparsely attended game, except of course that creepy grinning lady who was there to sit in the front row, affix a creepy smile, look out onto the field and gather publicity for the upcoming horror flick, “Smile.” She was eventually removed from her seat facing the pitcher. But it couldn’t be confirmed whether that was the handiwork of Mets manager Buck Showalter, who couldn’t have been in a very good mood after having to endure being the guest on The Post podcast “The Show,” in the morning, worrying about the rains coming to Atlanta throughout the day, then watching the horror show produced by the Mets at night.
If not for Pete Alonso crushing his 40th home run, knocking in three more runs to push his league-leading total to 131, a franchise record, the whole day would have been a whitewash. Chants of “MVP” rang out, and while they weren’t shouted with the same sort of conviction you hear in The Bronx for Aaron Judge, there’s certainly some merit to his case for a ballot spot.
Alonso at times must feel a bit like Judge felt through the dog days of August when he tried to carry the Yankees on his back.
The Mets were heavy lift on this day. A smattering of boos was heard a couple of times as Mets starter Carlos Carrasco allowed the light-hitting Marlins to score a week’s worth of runs, putting the game out of reach.
There was traffic on the bases in all three innings pitched by Carrasco, who’s a candidate to be the Mets’ fourth starter in the postseason along with Taijuan Walker, who will start Wednesday. Of course, if this keeps up, neither will be needed in the first part of the playoffs for the Mets. The wild-card round is a best of three.
