Mets suffer heartbreaking loss after Ozzie Albies hits walk-off bomb to complete comeback for Braves
ATLANTA— Everything went wrong for the Mets in Atlanta this week. The Braves walked it off by scoring in the 10th to secure a 13-10 win and series sweep on Thursday night at Truist Park. Raisel Iglesias set the Mets down in order in the top of the 10th and Tommy Hunter gave up a three-run bomb to Ozzie Albies to extend the Mets’ losing streak to six.
ATLANTA — Everything went wrong for the Mets in Atlanta this week. Just when it finally looked as though things would go right, the Mets somehow found a way to lose in an even more heartbreaking fashion than the two games prior.
The Braves walked it off by scoring in the 10th to secure a 13-10 win and series sweep on Thursday night at Truist Park. Raisel Iglesias (2-2) set the Mets down in order in the top of the 10th and Tommy Hunter (0-1) gave up a three-run bomb to Ozzie Albies to extend the Mets’ losing streak to six.
It was a gut punch of a loss to the top team in the NL East. The clubhouse optimism is strained but the Mets are adamant that their fire hasn’t been extinguished.
“It’s not a fun stretch to go through. It’s not how you envision things going,” said outfielder Brandon Nimmo, who hit a grand slam off Atlanta ace Spencer Strider in the second inning to put the Mets up 5-3. “But your only option is to keep pushing and push through it, and put a lot of hope in that, tomorrow, you’re going to turn things around. At any instant you could turn things into a 10-game win streak. You just have no other choice but to believe that unless you want to give up.”
Between Nimmo’s grand slam, two home runs from Francisco Alvarez and multi-hit performances from Jeff McNeil, Francisco Lindor, Brett Baty and Starling Marte, the Mets scored 10 runs on 14 hits. But an abysmal pitching performance by Justin Verlander and a porous bullpen left a packed crowd with the feeling the Mets were the ones chasing the game, even when the score said otherwise.
“I felt like, ‘This is going to be a high-scoring game, so we better keep our foot on the pedal and keep going,’” Nimmo said. “It just kind of had that feel. It had both offenses clicking and we know what Atlanta is always capable of. They love playing here and they’re very, very good here and they’re never out of it here.”
The Braves were still in it in the ninth inning when Orlando Arcia took David Robertson deep on a full count to tie the game at 10-10 and send it into extra innings.
“It’s frustrating because I made the pitch where I wanted to get it,” Robertson said. “If I could take it back, I’d maybe try a breaking ball but I don’t know if that would work any better either.”
The Mets (30-33) emptied the bullpen, using Stephen Nogosek, Jeff Brigham, Brooks Raley, Drew Smith and Robertson to get them through nine innings after Verlander lasted only three.
Verlander put the Mets in a 3-0 hole in the first inning and by the time he came out of the game after the third, the Braves (38-24) had scored two more.
Five runs (four earned) on seven hits with four walks and only three strikeouts isn’t what the Mets expected when they signed the reigning AL Cy Young Award winner. Verlander has had a few gems, but more often than not he hasn’t pitched to the level that anyone else expects from him. A 4.85 ERA is not a $43 million ERA.
“This guy has done this at a quality level and he feels good,” Showalter said. “I think he’ll continue to pitch well as we go forward.”
While the manager continued to downplay any concern over the lack of consistency in Verlander’s start, the right-hander himself expressed plenty of it. His primary concern seems to be that he doesn’t have an answer.
“I feel good physically and looking at all of the metrics and everything from the last few years, last year, to now, everything looks similar,” Verlander said. “Mechanically, pitch shape, pitch spin — all the stuff that you can look at. There’s something there though and I’ll find it.”
Alvarez’s first homer of the night was a two-run shot off Strider in the fourth. Nogosek gave up a home run in the fifth to Marcell Ozuna to make it 9-6, but Alvarez’s second home run of the night came in the bottom of the inning off right-hander Michael Tonkin to make it 10-6.
The Mets scored in the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth innings, but after starting with a lead in the first, the Braves again scored runs in the third, fifth, sixth, eighth, ninth and 10th.
The outings for Smith and Robertson didn’t go as planned. This was the third time in two weeks the Mets have scored 10 runs and managed to lose, which speaks to some larger pitching issues.
It was a wild contest with overturned calls, errors and a Braves fan that nearly beat the infamous Freeze.
If there’s anything to take from this one, it’s that the Mets unlocked something by using Alvarez as a designated hitter. He now has 11 home runs this season, which is tied with Lindor for the second-most on the team. It was his second multi-homer contest in only 46 Major League games.
The Mets have to keep their rookie catcher’s bat in the lineup as much as possible and find a way to fix their scuffling pitchers.
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