How the Mets, Braves fought back to earn postseason spots

ATLANTA — In the clubhouses at Truist Park on Monday, two champagne celebrations were conducted simultaneously, one by the New York Mets and one by the Atlanta Braves. The managers were soaked before retreating to their respective offices, grinning and alone, still processing all that had taken place on the final day of baseball’s regular season.

On one side of the building, the Braves’ Brian Snitker said he was glad his team would be continuing the season, even as he prepared for a cross-country flight, then paused. “What a roller coaster,” he said.

Across the way, Mets manager Carlos Mendoza was hitting a similar note, shaking his head: “This [day] was like our season. Lots of ups and downs. … What a roller coaster.”

That ride continues now for both teams, with the Mets traveling to play the Milwaukee Brewers for the wildcard round, and the Braves headed to San Diego. Even in an ever-dramatic elimination series, it seems impossible they could tumble and twist through the range of emotions they experienced Monday.

For Snitker, the tumult began a little more than an hour before the first pitch, when Chris Sale — the likely Cy Young Award winner in the NL this year — came to his office to inform Snitker that his ailing back was going to prevent him from pitching the second game of Monday’s doubleheader, as the Braves had planned him to if they lost the opener.

Sale seemed to have been injured in his last start, in Cincinnati, with his velocity dipping noticeably. As he received treatment in recent days, there were times when he thought he was making progress. But he knows how back trouble goes: You just never know. On Sunday night, Sale’s back hurt — badly. Snitker still hoped that Sale would feel better in the morning, but the pitcher — the most unselfish star player Snitker has ever been around, he said — was a no go. Snitker wasn’t panicked: He still hoped that the Braves would win the first game of the doubleheader, eliminating the need to use Sale and perhaps even buying him another day to improve.

And sure enough, it seemed for a while like Sale’s injury wouldn’t matter. Spencer Schwellenbach dominated the Mets for seven innings, filling the strike zone with curveballs and sliders and fastballs, constantly getting ahead in the count. The Braves had a 3-0 lead as the eighth inning of Game 1 began, with Schwellenbach in control.

Then Tyrone Taylor pushed Schwellenbach through an 11-pitch at-bat to lead off the inning with a double, and Snitker pulled his starter and called on reliever Joe Jimenez. Starling Marte singled; so did Francisco Lindor. The Braves’ lead was suddenly down to a run. Snitker summoned his closer, Raisel Iglesias, in the hope that he could get the next six outs.

Before the game, the Mets’ Iglesias — Jose Iglesias — had started his round of batting practice, as all hitters do, by dropping a couple of bunts. Iglesias was more purposeful than most in his attempts, trying to bury them along the third base line. He can bunt well — he’s had 24 sacrifice bunts in his career, although none since 2019. And here in the eighth inning, he knew that the situation — runners at first and second, nobody out, the Mets down a run — seemed to scream for a sacrifice.

Jose Iglesias walked over to joined the two baserunners, Francisco Lindor and Starling Marte, as they met with their manager in front of the Mets’ dugout, an impromptu conference. Iglesias asked the manager with a silent nod: Do you want me to bunt?

“Do you see him good?” Mendoza asked Iglesias, referring to Raisel.

Iglesias answered yes — and he had the green light to swing..

“This is your at-bat,” Mendoza said, “and you’re going to get it done.”

“That got me so fired up, that he trusted me,” Iglesias said later.

Raisel Iglesias quickly got ahead 0-2, but when Raisel tried to finish Jose with a pitch away, the Met punched it into right field, a two-run single to tie the game. Jose Iglesias pumped his fists and slammed himself in the chest on his way to first. Before this, the Mets had lost 47 straight games trailing by three or more runs in the eighth inning or later, a streak dating back to May 2023.

“I saw a guy that wanted more than anybody else on the field,” Lindor later said of Iglesias. “That’s what I saw. A guy that wasn’t going to give in. A guy that told me, the last of every game, we’re going to fight the way we do.”

When Brandon Nimmo followed with a home run, the Mets led 6-3. Mendoza saw a chance to clinch a playoff spot, and when the Braves began to rally in the bottom of the eighth inning, he turned to closer Edwin Diaz. With five outs to go, this was a reasonable ask: Diaz had finished off the Phillies throwing 100 mph fastballs over two innings eight days before.

On Monday, however, Diaz’s first fastball was 96 mph; his second was 94 mph. This was not the same Diaz, in velocity or command. He failed to cover first base on a chopper hit to the right side, and all Pete Alonso could do was to watch Jarred Kelenic beat him to the bag, for what was ruled a single by the official scorer. It wasn’t long before Ozzie Albies moved forward in the batter’s box, closer to home plate, and ambushed one of those benign fastballs for a bases-clearing double. The Braves were back ahead; the score was 7-6, and the teams had combined for 10 runs in the inning.

With Raisel Iglesias out of the game after just seven pitches, Snitker called on Pierce Johnson to get the last three outs. Marte singled with one out, and Lindor hammered a slider high to right field.

Initially, he grimaced, to the dismay of Mets fans — a player who dealing with lingering back discomfort, perhaps, or who felt he was just missed a pitch.

“I knew I got it, 100%,” Lindor said.

The Mets’ dugout erupted, again; somehow, the Mets were ahead, again. In three half innings, there were three lead changes.

Mendoza had planned to take Diaz out of the game, but Diaz talked his way back in, for the bottom of the ninth — OK, he kind of demanded to pitch the ninth, and his manager gave in to the All-Star closer. When Diaz got the final out, he turned and spiked his glove on the mound before hugging Alvarez. Lindor wiped away tears, giving Mets owner Steve Cohen a huge hug, before Lindor, Diaz and Tylor Megill spoke to the players in the runway behind the dugout — the formal acknowledgment they had made the playoffs. (Major League Baseball had asked the teams before the day’s action to not share in any kind of celebration featuring alcohol between games of the doubleheader.)

The Braves, on the other hand, were suddenly faced with the reality that a loss in Game 2 would knock them out and allow the Diamondbacks to sneak in as the No. 6 seed — and within 15 minutes of the end of Game 1, word began emerging from the Braves’ clubhouse that Sale would not be able to pitch Game 2. Mendoza was walking in the clubhouse when an attendant mentioned it to him.

Not even all of Sale’s Braves teammates had been aware, though some were. Grant Holmes was told about 10 minutes after Game 1 that he would start the next game. Snitker, sitting in the dugout before Game 2, said he wouldn’t have used Holmes in relief on Sunday afternoon had he known that he would need him Monday.

But Holmes threw well and the Mets’ hitters hacked aggressively in Game 2, which had a feel of a spring training game for a while, with the Braves fans quietly watching Atlanta try to hold a 1-0 lead. The Braves seemed tired or frustrated or exhausted, near the end of a season filled with injuries to everyone from Spencer Strider to Ronald Acuna Jr. to Austin Riley.

As Atlanta hit in the bottom of the six inning, Eddie Perez — a longtime member of the Braves’ organization — got directly in front of Marcell Ozuna, Atlanta’s slumping DH, and began speaking to him sharply. At one point, Perez leaned down directly in front of him, challenging him. Ozuna has been the Braves’ MVP this year, but a late-season slump diminished his numbers, and he appeared sullen among his teammates Monday, very different than most of the year. Perez told him to stop thinking about himself, and focus more on the team. “When you hit, we win,” Perez said to Ozuna, who stared ahead.

In his next plate appearance, Ozuna smacked a single to center field, increasing Atlanta’s lead to 3-0. Finally. The Braves could breathe. “That’s why I keep Eddie Perez here — to chew some ass,” Snitker said. “And to order the wine.”

Snitker summoned Raisel Iglesias for a mulligan, and in this second game, Iglesias’s stuff was better — or maybe the Mets and Braves were all just tired and wanted to get the doubleheader over with, ready to drink some champagne and smoke cigars, at the end of a weird and crazy day of baseball. In the Braves’ clubhouse, Orlando Arcia sprayed Albies and Ozuna with bottles. As the Mets celebrated, they moved from the field to the clubhouse and back.

In Snitker’s office, he was asked who he planned to start in Game 1 of the wild card series in San Diego Tuesday. He answered with a sigh. “I have no idea.”