A Second Slump And Some Pitching Injuries Provide The Mets Another Chance To Rewrite The Narrative

The last time the Mets endured a stretch reminiscent of the before times — a 2-6 funk from May 14-23 capped by a 7-5, 13-inning loss to the Dodgers in which they didn’t score at all in overtime — they responded by winning 15 of their next 18 games to cement themselves as the clear favorite in the NL East.

So there’s very recent evidence to suggest there’s no reason to worry over the Mets, who endured their first series sweep of the season when the Rays won three in a row in increasingly convincing fashion at Citi Field last weekend. The Mets still own the best record in the NL at 45-27 and still retain the best odds of not only winning the pennant but also winning the World Series per the daily tracker at Baseball Reference.

Except, well, you know, the Mets are spending the next 10 days playing the Braves and Phillies, the two teams who have generated the most heartache at Shea Stadium and Citi Field this century.

The Mets do enter the NL East round-robin — which begins tonight with the first of three games in Atlanta — with plenty of momentum against their forever foes. Lots of demons were exorcised in a 10-day span last fall, when the Mets clinched a wild card berth with frantic 8-7 win over the Braves in game no. 161 before beating the Brewers in a three-game wild card series and disposing of the Phillies in four games in an NL Division Series.

“The Braves are a very good team, I don’t care what their record says,” Brandon Nimmo said Sunday afternoon. “Very, very good team that can play very good baseball — pitch very well, hit very well, especially in their home ballpark. So we’re going to be going in there expecting a bulldog fight. Be ready for game one.

“And same thing (with) Philadelphia.”

Still, the next 10 days against a pair of capable foes will reveal just how many cracks began appearing in the Mets’ overachieving rotation last week. Kodai Senga, who leads the majors in ERA, suffered a right hamstring injury Thursday and will likely be out through July.

Paul Blackburn, Clay Holmes, Tylor Megill and Griffin Canning — who were slated to start Wednesday through Saturday until Megill was placed on the injured list today with a right elbow sprain — then combined to allow 17 runs (14 earned) over 13 1/3 inning against the Rays. Blackburn appeared in relief Friday after Holmes exited after five innings due to a slow recovery from his previous start in Colorado.

Suddenly the team that had too much starting pitching might not have enough — especially with Frankie Montas and Sean Manaea, the reinforcements the Mets thought were on the horizon, combining to post an 11.95 ERA in eight rehab starts.

“It’s a good thing to have more major league quality starting pitchers than less,” president of baseball operations David Stearns said Friday afternoon. “I’m frankly never really concerned about having too much, because as we saw (with Senga’s injury) and as I’ve experienced throughout my career, it’s very, very rare where you actually get to the point where you have too many starting pitchers that you can roster.”

And the Braves and Phillies are still the Braves and the Phillies — forever capable of resuming their tormenting of the Mets at a moment’s notice.

At two games back of the Mets, the Phillies remain a series sweep away from taking over first place. Philadelphia has also won five in a row — the first four against the contending Cubs and Blue Jays — following a 2-10 skid.

The Braves, who are 31-39 and 13 1/2 games behind the Mets despite a positive run differential, are the team that appears to be treating this stretch as a last stand much like the Mets would have over the previous 25 years.

Atlanta pushed reigning NL Cy Young Award winner Chris Sale back from his scheduled start Sunday in order to ensure Spencer Schwellenbach would start the series opener tonight and that Sale and Spencer Strider would each make their next two turns against the Mets.

The sight of the Braves on a nearly daily basis the next week-and-a-half is a reminder they’ve been summoning their championship pedigree to turn back or overcome the Mets for more than a quarter century now — never more so than in 2022, when they trailed the Mets by 10 1/2 games on June 1 and seven games on Aug. 10 left before finishing the season on a 35-15 kick to win the NL East via a tiebreaker.

The Braves earned that tiebreaker by virtue of winning the season series following a three-game sweep of the Mets in Atlanta on the final weekend of the season in which they won games started by Jacob deGrom, Max Scherzer and Chris Bassitt.

In June 2023, the Braves basically ended the Mets’ playoff hopes with a demoralizing three-game sweep in which they came back from multi-run deficits every night — a trio of wins that left even the perpetually optimistic Nimmo acknowledging the Braves’ historical dominance.

“People will look at this series and see if there’s a recipe on how to beat us,” Nimmo said Sunday afternoon.

For the Mets, there’s no better time than now to continue proving their recipe against the Phillies and Braves has finally — and forever — changed.