This Braves horror movie looks all too familiar to the Mets

ATLANTA – I’ve seen this horror movie before, and the Mets are not making it out of this haunted house alive.

The lineup changes – on both sides – and the scenery changes as the Braves change stadiums every 20 years or so. But the results?

It’s not just that the Mets came to Atlanta on Tuesday night and lost. It was also that everything looked familiar. They played poorly at every stage. The Braves played well. Atlanta center fielder Michael Harris was such a superior chipper from the old block that you could convince me he’ll name his next child Citi.

The opening game of this crucial series ended 5-1, and it is unclear when Game 2 will be played – Wednesday, Thursday, or as part of a doubleheader next Monday (the day after the end of the regular season and before the start of the playoffs).

The Mets’ lead over the Braves in the wild-card standings was cut to one point the same day Georgia Governor Brian Kemp declared a state of emergency and prepared for Tropical Storm Helene, which could make landfall as a Category 3 hurricane. Heavy rain is expected on Wednesday and then in a flash on Thursday, so the champagne shower expected by the Mets and their owner Steve Cohen is unlikely to arrive in Atlanta (if at all).

The Mets could secure a wild card and that win with two wins against the Braves. But if the Braves beat the Mets again, they would secure the season series and, if the two clubs end up tied, the playoff tiebreaker.

Whenever it comes (if it comes), Cohen is so hungry for his first champagne dinner as Mets owner that, although he has agreed to host his 50th high school reunion at Citi Field on Saturday, he plans to forego it if the Mets can pull off the win in Milwaukee that day. When the Mets were wild cards in 2022, there was a champagne toast. That’s because they were swept out of first place in the penultimate series of the year in Atlanta, and so the second-place celebration was muted when it came to that.

Before Tuesday’s first pitch in this season’s penultimate series, Cohen had insisted that his current group didn’t have muscle memory of the bad vibes it got from playing in this city because the roster had changed so much in two years. But everything from the stadium to the players to the Mets owners had changed since 1998-99, when the Braves first beat the Mets in the final series of 1998 to keep them out of the postseason and then eliminated them in Game 6 of the 1999 NLCS.

The faces change. Not the theme. The Braves moved to the NL East in 1994 and have since won 18 division titles and two World Series, while the Mets have two division titles and no championships. The Mets are now 25-37 at Truist.

“We haven’t played well,” Carlos Mendoza admitted. “We have to turn it around. I know it’s going to be history because it’s here in Atlanta. We have to go out and do it. We’re still capable of going out here and winning a series.”

Perhaps the Mets are better positioned for a re-alignment. After missing his eighth consecutive game because of a back problem, Lindor was on hold at the end of the first day of the series and could be in the starting lineup on Wednesday if there is a game.

On Tuesday, the tone was set in the first inning. The Mets were shut out 1-2-3 on seven pitches by Spencer Schwellenbach. The Braves also didn’t score, but Harris managed five fouls with two strikes before singleding, and Luisangel Acuña botched a double play, prompting Severino to throw 25 pitches.

Schwellenbach, a rotation reliever after rocketing up in the minors, held the Mets to no hits in six at-bats with men on base and managed just one home run, off Mark Vientos, in seven innings. In four innings, Severino endured 33 foul balls, 14 of them with two strikes, as the Braves skillfully extended their at-bats. In the third inning, the pitcher and Francisco Alvarez collided on a swinging bunt and Severino mistakenly threw the ball down the line. Before the inning was over, Starling Marte airmailed a cutoff man. In between, Harris scored the first run with a double in a three-run frame. In the next inning, he hit a home run and caught the ball on a diving catch to steal a hit from Acuña in the following inning.

Now, weather permitting, the Mets will have to face NL Cy Young favorite Chris Sale and Atlanta’s longtime top player Max Fried.

“They’re a good team,” Brandon Nimmo said. “They’re not just going to die for you. So we know we’re up for a challenge.”

As we know, the nightmare killer in this kind of movie never gives up and just dies. Nevertheless, Nimmo also dismissed the ghosts of Atlanta and also mentioned the changing lineup from two years ago. However, more than two years have passed. It’s been a quarter century since one team beat another. The Cohen/David Stearns/Mendoza Mets are trying to prove that a new day has dawned.

The horror movie advises never to go to the haunted house again. The Mets have returned. Can they write another script?