Mets' missed opportunities come back to haunt them with likely harder path in October

The games were all close enough, or so the scores would make it seem. In truth, however, the Mets never really gave anyone reason to believe they could beat the Atlanta Braves this weekend, as their star pitchers couldn’t keep the ball in the ballpark and their big hitters couldn’t do much more than slap singles through the infield.

All in all, it was nothing short of stunning.

At least it was if you remember how completely the Mets dominated these same Braves at Citi Field in early August, winning four of five games to take a lead of 6 ½ games and seemingly leave no doubt they were going to win the NL East.

That’s what makes this fall from first place, via the three-game sweep in Atlanta, so bitterly disappointing to the Mets and their fans.

They were on top essentially all season and to let it get away at this point is a testament to the Braves’ tenacity and talent, to be sure, but also an indictment of the Mets’ ability to win games when they were needed most.

It’s not fair to call it a collapse. Even after the sweep in Atlanta that concluded with Sunday night’s 5-3 loss, the Mets are still 15-13 since the start of September. But it’s more than fair to say they blew a golden opportunity, not even so much in this series as in failing to take advantage of their soft September schedule.

It’s still unfathomable that they were swept at home by the Chicago Cubs, or that they went 2-6 at Citi Field against the Cubs, Nationals, and Marlins last month.

And mostly that goes back to the offense disappearing on too many nights down the stretch. For most of the season the Mets responded with such grit on a nightly basis that you thought they’d be able to dig deep when it mattered most, with the bonus of having Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer to dominate on the mound.

But the lack of offense took on a life of its own down the stretch, and deGrom and Scherzer left Mets fans in disbelief that they couldn’t deliver dominance against the Braves.

And so now you have to wonder what the postseason will bring for this team.

They’re very likely going in as a Wild Card team; it would be beyond a miracle for the Miami Marlins to sweep the Braves while the Mets were winning all three games against the Washington Nationals at Citi Field.

And that’s what it would take after the Mets lost Sunday night, falling two games out of first place, while the Braves also earned the divisional tiebreaker by taking the season series 10-9.

So if the Mets are going to win a championship this season, they’re going to have to do it the hard way, starting with surviving a three-game Wild Card series likely against the San Diego Padres at Citi Field next weekend rather than getting a bye into the divisional round.

Furthermore, they’ll likely have to use at least deGrom and Scherzer in the series, putting them in a less-than-optimal position should they advance to what would be a meeting with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

That’s why the bye matters so much in this new playoff format. That’s why it was so important the Mets not to go to sleep against those bad teams in September.

But at this point you have to wonder: Is the offense so flawed and so lacking in championship-caliber power that it is destined to have a short run in the upcoming postseason?

After all, the Mets scored only seven runs in the three games in Atlanta, despite the fact that none of the Braves’ starting pitchers went more than five innings.

That should have given the Mets an opening to do damage, as Brian Snitker had to use a minimum of four different relievers in every game. Yet when all was said and done, the Braves’ bullpen gave up a grand total of one run over 12.2 innings.

So what ever happened to the Mets’ offense that led the world in two-out, two-strike hitting early in the season and looked like their contact-hitting approach could do enough damage to make up for their relative lack of power?

In retrospect it was unrealistic to think they could be that clutch all season, but their failure to produce in big spots and struggle to score runs at all sometimes felt like more than a regression to the mean.

For much of the season, Pete Alonso and Francisco Lindor’s home run and RBI production carried the offense, but the over-reliance on them showed up at critical times over the final month, and especially this weekend.

Still, when it came right down to it, the difference this weekend was that the Braves’ stars delivered, as Dansby Swanson, Matt Olson, and Austin Riley combined for seven home runs, while Alonso and Lindor failed to produce one extra-base hit.

It was a far cry from that hot weekend in August when the Mets pounded Braves pitching for 31 runs in five games, in addition to getting dominance from deGrom, Scherzer, and Chris Bassitt.

So maybe the Mets simply weren’t ready for the pennant-race pressure the Braves applied relentlessly down the stretch. Certainly Bassitt and some of the hitters seemed to wilt playing such a pressurized series in the hostile environment that was Truist Park this weekend.

These Mets haven’t experienced any of that as a team until now. They still have a chance to prove they’re tough enough when the postseason begins next weekend.

They’ve just created a much more difficult path. And a fair share of doubt, at least from the outside, that didn’t exist back in those glory days of August.