It’s been mighty hard to find joy as a Mets fan in recent days. Despite still being in playoff position, a season that once seemed filled with limitless potential has suddenly felt on the verge of complete collapse in the midst of their current seven-game losing streak. So we all desperately needed tonight. Not only did we finally get a moment we’ve been waiting all season for, but the bats on the whole woke up in a major way. It wasn’t a perfect evening, as the starting rotation issues that have plagued the club for months still reared their ugly head. But the losing streak is nevertheless officially over after the Mets pulverized the Braves 13-5 in the series opener against their division rivals.
Clay Holmes—who has struggled as he’s gotten deeper and deeper into his first full season as a starter—took the mound tonight, and the Braves got off to a quick start against him. Jurickson Profar walked to lead off the game, and Matt Olson then lined a double over the head of Juan Soto in right field to put runners on second and third with nobody out. Drake Baldwin then hit a groundball to second base, recording the first out but also securing the first run of the ballgame to put the Mets behind.
Holmes managed to get himself out of the inning without additional damage, though. And the Mets managed to do quite a bit of their own damage against Braves starting pitcher Spencer Strider. After a quiet first inning, Pete Alonso led off the second with a double. Strider retired the next two batters and was on the verge of getting out of the frame with the lead intact, but Cedric Mullins managed to line a ball to center, bringing Alonso home and tying the game. And Francisco Alvarez then made Strider pay for not closing out the inning, as he followed the Mullins hit with an opposite-field two-run shot to give the Mets a 3-1 lead.
One inning later, the Amazins would strike again—once more with some big two-out hits. After two quick outs from Strider, Brandon Nimmo lined a single to left to bring Alonso up. And the Polar Bear—after hitting his 252nd career home run over the weekend in Milwaukee—made history yet again, lining the first pitch he saw into the bullpen in right field for a two-run shot. With that bomb, Alonso now stands alone as the all-time leader in home runs for the Mets. The crowd, predictably, went wild. And sure, most of that excitement was for this moment that fans have been eagerly anticipating ever since Alonso re-signed with the Mets in the offseason. But some small part of it was likely also because, after weeks of horrific struggles for the team, they now had what seemed to be a pretty secure lead.
But if there’s one thing we know about this Mets team right now, it’s that their starting pitchers are deeply, powerfully, utterly obsessed with A) not doing deep into games, and B) surrendering leads. So it should come to nobody’s surprise that Holmes did not manage to hang onto the four-run lead that he was given. He had managed to induce double plays to get of jams in the second and third innings (with the latter one being the result of some poor baserunning on the Braves’ part), but allowing baserunners had been an issue for him on all night, and it came back to bite him in a big way in the top of the fourth. After recording the first out of the frame, Holmes proceeded to load the bases on two singles (one on a groundball that bounced off the glove of a diving Lindor) and a walk. Nacho Alvarez Jr. then proceeded to hit a line-drive double to left, scoring two runs and cutting the lead to 5-3. Holmes then issued yet another walk (his fifth in less than four innings) to load the bases once more. Profar followed that with a groundball to second that McNeil bobbled slightly; he still managed to get the out at second, but another run scored to make it 5-4. At this point, Carlos Mendoza had Gregory Soto warming in the bullpen, but he elected to allow Holmes to face the lefty-hitting Olson with two outs. That proved to be a mistake, as Olson hit a double to left field to drive home the tying run.
With that, Holmes’s day was finally done—and his line (3.2 innings, 6 hits, 5 walks, 4 strikeouts, 5 runs) was about as ugly as can be. In a stretch where the Mets have been incapable of getting any hint of length from the starting rotation, tonight’s performance was the last thing they needed. The team has already announced that they are moving one of the primary culprits of the rotations’ inefficiency (that being Frankie Montas) to the bullpen, and outings like this will only serve to raise the question of whether they should follow suit with Holmes. In any event, Soto came on and managed to record the final out of the inning to keep his final line from being worse.
Over the past week of horrible games, it has often felt like the Mets—when suffering from a disastrous inning like this one—would quickly roll over and die. One could be forgiven from believing the bats would once again roll over against the Braves’ pitching staff tonight. But after Strider recorded the first two outs of the bottom of the fourth, Lindor—trying to break out of a slump—laid down a perfect bunt for a hit. Juan Soto then walked to put two runners on. And Nimmo—eager to try to maintain pace with Alonso on the all-time Mets homers list—hit a shot of his own to right-center field, driving in three and giving the Mets the lead once more. Strider got Alonso to fly out to end the inning, but that would prove to be the end of his night. And as bad as Holmes’s final line looked, Strider’s somehow proved to be even worse (4 innings, 8 hits, 2 walks, 2 strikeouts, 8 runs).
Gregory Soto came back on for the top of the fifth and got around a couple singles to put up a scoreless frame. Austin Cox was called upon out of the Braves bullpen in the bottom of the inning. And once again, the Mets managed to do some two-out damage. After Cox struck out the first two batters, Mullins lined a ball into center and hustled into second for a double. Alvarez then traded places with him on the bases, lining a double off the wall in right-center to score another run. And then for good measure, Brett Baty hit a ground ball up the middle that just snuck past a diving Nick Allen, bringing Alvarez home to make it 10-5.
Now working with a slightly larger lead, Mendoza brought on Justin Hagenman for the top of the sixth to get some length out of the pen. He threw a sterling 1-2-3 inning with two strikeouts in his first inning of work. And in the bottom of the frame, the Mets once again struck against Cox with two outs (in case you hadn’t noticed, each and every one of their runs up to this point had come with two outs). And once again, it was Pete Alonso doing the damage, as he hit a two-out shot to left-center field to pad his lead on the all-time Mets list with #254. Then after another scoreless inning inning from Hagenman, the Amazins added even more two-out runs against Cox in the seventh—once again with some solo homers, these ones off the bat of Alvarez (his second of the night) and Baty. Those two shots—which gave the Mets six on the night, tying a home franchise record—put the lead at 13-5.
Things were dire enough for the Braves at this point that Luke Williams—a position player, for those keeping track at home—was brought on to pitch at this point. He proved to be the most effective pitcher for the Braves all evening, as he got out of the seventh and then came back to pitch a scoreless eighth while only surrendering two singles. But that proved to be of little import, as Hagenman continued to perform admirably as the long-man out of the pen. He pitched yet another scoreless frame in the eighth and then came on for the rare four-inning save in the ninth. He shut the Braves down 1-2-3 in that final frame to end the game. And while today will always be remembered as the Pete Alonso game, Hagenman’s four hitless innings to preserve the bullpen should not go unnoticed (especially considering he’s likely to be thanked for his trouble by being optioned to Syracuse in favor of a fresh arm tomorrow).
In any event: it’s over. “It” being both the seven-game losing streak and Darryl Strawberry’s reign as the all-time leader in home runs for the Mets. As we said at the top: the Mets needed this one. We needed this one. Back at it tomorrow.
FanGraphs
Big Mets winner: Brandon Nimmo, +30.1% WPA
Big Mets loser: Clay Holmes, -37.3% WPA
Mets pitchers: -23.1% WPA
Mets hitters: +73.1% WPA
Teh aw3s0mest play: Brandon Nimmo three-run homer in the fourth, +30.5% WPA
Teh sux0rest play: Nacho Alvarez Jr. two-run double in the fourth, -16.7% WPA