No tomorrow.
It’s come down to that for the Atlanta Braves when they host the white-hot New York Mets for the first of three games at Truist Park tonight at 7:20.
Currently down two games for the final National League wildcard playoff spot, the Braves can ill afford to lose any of the three against the Mets and expect to eclipse them in the final standings. Technically, it’s possible. New York must close out the season with three games in Milwaukee, no easy task.
At that same time, Atlanta hosts Kansas City for three.
But let’s just say the Braves take two of three. They’d be down a game heading into the final weekend against a Mets team that’s won 18 of its last 23 against a brutal closing schedule, including taking three of four from the NL East champ Philadelphia Phillies this past weekend.
The Mets are the hottest team in baseball. The Braves are bruised and battered and hanging on for life. Were you a betting man, who would you bet on?
There’s no secret why the Braves are in this mess. They’re about half the team personnel-wise they were when the season began. In some ways, it’s a miracle they still have a chance for the wildcard given how well the Mets have played down the stretch, when they’ve posted the best record in baseball since the end of May.
So if they don’t make the playoffs, no one in Braves Country should think any less of them. They fought as hard as they could for as long as they could with, in a lot of cases, the B team.
Even tonight, who would have thought in May that Spencer Schwellenbach, not Spencer Strider, Spencer SCHWELLENBACH, would be the starting pitcher of the first game of the most important series of the year?
And if Schwellenbach somehow wins, then it will fall to the immensely capable Chris Sale to win on Wednesday, with Max Fried taking the mound Thursday. But Wednesday and Thursday wouldn’t appear to matter if tonight becomes a loss. The Braves dropped two of three to the Mets inside Truist back in the spring. Nothing less than a sweep of the Mets figures to send the Braves to a seventh straight postseason this time.
A day or two ago, Mets outfielder Brandon Nimmo said of this series, “I feel like we’ve been playing playoff games for the last week or so, and we shouldn’t treat it any differently than that. You go into there, it’s going to be high energy, it’s going to be a playoff atmosphere and it’s going to be great.”
It does promise to be great for any baseball fans who don’t care if the Braves or the Mets reach the postseason. The atmosphere is sure to be electric, particularly if Atlanta wins tonight to keep hope alive.
To their credit, the Braves seem to understand what’s at stake. How there’s basically zero margin for error. How a 162-game season basically comes down to three weeknights in late September. And they finally have Ozzie Albies back in the lineup and Matt Olson tattooing the ball the way he did last season. They can pull this thing out. But will they?
“We knew it a couple of weeks ago: That series was probably going to help decide this thing,” Atlanta catcher Sean Murphy said on Monday. “We know what we’re up against and we know what we have to do. It just comes down to us. If we win, we’re in.”
If.
(Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@mccallie.org)