Sooner or later, it's OK to confess that there's something refreshing about these every day dramas, all the time in two components, in two locations, in two cities. If you're a Mets fan — or a Braves fan, for that matter — you retain hoping for respiration room as the times soften off the September calendar. You retain on the lookout for elbow room atop the NL East, because the video games fall off the schedule.
It by no means occurs. The Mets win and the Braves win. The Mets lose and the Braves lose. They circle one another. They measure one another. They jab. They stick and transfer and rope-a-dope one another. Neither one can get very far-off from the opposite.
And it’s humorous: In a yr through which extra groups than ever earlier than in a full baseball season will make the playoffs, in a time through which we had all however declared such issues lifeless, the Mets and the Braves have given us one thing fully sudden.
They’ve given us a pennant race.
And old school, real, no-kidding, honest-to-goodness pennant race.
“These video games are one thing,” supervisor Buck Showalter stated. “Each considered one of them.”
The Mets got here into their matinee Wednesday towards the Brewers on a six-game successful streak. The Braves had gained 5 straight and 10 in a row at residence. They shortly went up 2-0 on the Nationals early Wednesday afternoon, and that was the rating when the Mets took the sector, figuring they’d need to win once more to maintain tempo.
However the Nats got here again and beat the Braves 3-2.
And the Brewers hammered the Mets — in fact — 6-0.
The Mets win and the Braves win.
The Mets lose and the Braves lose.
“It’s type of bizarre the way in which it’s been taking place the final couple of weeks,” Mets outfielder Mark Canha stated. “That is going to be a grind to the top. It’s going to return right down to the wire and we've to do the perfect we are able to each day.”
That is what a pennant race seems like. That is what a pennant race seems like. Now, in the event you select to take the trail of the purist, you may dismiss it in the event you like. In any case, each the Mets and the Braves have already clinched spots within the postseason. They won't be left behind just like the 1954 Yankees or the 1978 Purple Sox or the 1993 Giants, highly effective runners-up that spent all of October on golf programs and seashores.
Nonetheless, the distinction between first place and second place — the distinction between a first-round bye and a crapshoot best-of-three wild-card jamboree — mimics these old-time stakes. Second place within the NL East should survive the wild-card gauntlet, and in the event that they do they’ll get the Dodgers immediately for his or her troubles. First place will get 4 days off, will get to arrange the pitching rotation, and can get to keep away from the Dodgers till the NLCS, assuming chalk guidelines the day.
Each the Braves and the Mets have the flexibility to struggle their means out of the wild-card field; neither one needs any a part of discovering out if that’s so or not.
“You’ve obtained to maintain pushing to the top,” Canha stated. “Hold operating by means of the end line.”
The Braves pulled to inside a recreation of the Mets on Sept. 4. Each day ever since, neither group has been greater than 1 ½ video games up, and by no means a couple of up or down within the loss column. That’s 18 straight days of holding serve, 18 straight days of refusing to blink, 18 straight days of resilience, either side, each groups. With 14 days of season left.
The Braves have gone 70-29 since June 1, a 115-win tempo. And but they’ve solely spent a type of days in first place. The Mets surrendered the highest spot Sept. 9, obtained it proper again the following day, and have stayed there by the slimmest margins out there. The Mets have gone 61-39 since June 1. That’s a hundred-win tempo.
In most years, these 3 ½-month samples could be greater than sufficient to begin calculating magic numbers and taking victory laps to the top. Simply not this yr. Not within the NL East. Not when the Mets win and the Braves win, when the Mets lose and the Braves lose, day after day, week after week.
Yeah. It is a pennant race, all proper. Ask the Mets. Ask the Braves. They’ll reply as quickly as they run by means of the end line.
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