Atlanta Braves loss marks 4,000th franchise win for New York Mets

I was really really hoping that after a loss like the one the Atlanta Braves suffered last night, they’d come out with a burning fire under their arse, show that last night was a fluke, and find themselves in an ugly game early and coast themselves to a series-evening victory. Well, only part of that was correct, as the every batter in the New York Mets line up had at least one hit by the end of the third inning, and Mets’ starter Jacob DeGrom was simply too good and too strong, going seven innings of seven hit ball but striking out 11 Atlanta hitters. With some stellar defense behind him, deGrom notched his second win on the season in an 8-3 route to take the first two games of this long midweek series. The victory also marked the 4,000th in New York Mets history. (Instant trivia for all of you!)

If you’ll recall, the Braves met DeGrom last week, where they tacked three runs on him in the first inning. Well, after that, he settled down tremendously, throwing four shutout innings to close Wednesday’s game, and with the seven he threw tonight, he is now at 11 unanswered innings against the Atlanta offense.

On the Atlanta side of things, it simply wasn’t newly crowned All Star Julio Teheran‘s night, as he only went 3.1 innings (and it’s pretty amazing he went that long) allowing five runs on 11 hits and only striking out two. While we wont know what was wrong (if anything was truly wrong, it may have very well just been an off night) with Teheran, popular perception, at least on twitter, was that he and rookie catcher Christian Bethancourt weren’t seeing eye to eye (somewhat reminiscent of what transpired between Bethancourt and Luis Avilan last night), as there were a bounty of meetings between the two and a constant disagreement on what to throw. If both of these guys are going to stay around, we might have to have a situation that Greg Maddux found himself in, as Javy Lopez rarely, if ever, caught him (although that was more for Lopez to have a day off). But, of course, that’s another conversation for another day.

And, while it was an abysmal day for the Braves, let us not forget that the Mets bullpen is, for lack of a better word, terrible, and it was on display in the 9th inning. It took two different pitchers, and the Braves were able to scrape across a couple of runs, but ultimately the bad ‘pen was good enough to seal the deal for the win.

One rare piece of good news for the Braves tonight; the Kid, Tommy La Stella, is currently riding a five game hitting streak. So, there is that.

But, the only streak that matters right now is the three game skid Atlanta finds themselves on currently, and will try to right the ship, and Ervin Santana will look to win the first game of the series as he’ll square off versus Dillon Gee.