It was fitting that the Mets had to wear those appalling white jerseys this weekend. You couldn't see their numbers, their names or their game. All you could see was yet another loss to their eternal tormentors.
The Mets just got swept away by the Braves, dumped into the Harlem River and left clawing for moral victories. The Mets are 5-11 against the Braves this season, a familiar, woeful refrain for a team that can't handle winning in general and against Atlanta in particular. On Monday morning, WFAN's Joe Benigno sarcastically wondered if this was 1999 all over again, one of many years in which the Mets played well enough to face the Braves and poorly enough to get whipped by them.
Dallas Keuchel, a potential prize for the Mets earlier in the year, has blanked the Mets in 13 innings over two starts. Meanwhile, the Mets blew two fine starts, one from Jacob deGrom and the other from Steven Matz. Each starter pitched at least six innings while allowing just one run. DeGrom even homered to produce the Mets' only run of the game. You have to wonder how the Mets keep blowing games to Atlanta over the last 25 years when the players and managers rotate every few years. Enter Josh Donaldson, a former Blue Jay, who has somehow channeled the ghostly mojo of Braves past, bashing nine of his 32 homers against the Mets. (The same guy who listens to Adele to get jacked up at the gym.)
But if the Mets are to seize upon their 27-10 run before they hit this Braves roadblock, they had better start winning again. They got a little lucky over this lost weekend, as the Cubs lost three games to the Nationals, and are just two games out of a wild-card spot. But they have to leapfrog the Phillies and Cubs -- and perhaps the Brewers, who have the same record as the Mets -- to play October baseball.
And it won't be easy, considering the club's schedule.
The Mets (67-63) have 32 games left this season, and they cannot afford another sweep -- particularly at home -- against anyone. Out of those 32 games, 18 are against teams ahead of them in the playoff race. It starts Tuesday night against the Cubs at Citi Field.
The Mets need more from Pete Alonso, who just blasted his 41st home run this season, tying Carlos Beltran and Todd Hundley for the most in Mets history. They need Jeff McNeil, who just returned from the injured list over the weekend, to hit like he did before his hamstring injury. They need J.D. Davis to keep it going. They need to find gems from that bag of coal they call their bullpen. They need midseason pickup Marcus Stroman to deliver a signature moment in a Mets uniform. And they need Wilson Ramos to keep remembering that he hit .306 last year.
They need to win. And it likely means demanding more from a rotation that has been their bridge to playoff contention.
And the next week will answer a vital question. Did the Mets expend so much energy while pounding their way back to relevance that they ran out of gas? Will the Mets slip now that they have climbed to the cliff of contention? The problem with such late-summer surges is you wonder how much is left after they elbow through the crowd to the front of the line.
The Mets made it work in 2015 because Yoenis Cespedes landed like an asteroid and then took off like a rocket. He got to Flushing just in time to fuel their run to the Fall Classic. The Mets don't have a singular spark like that. Certainly not Cespedes, who finds fresh new ways to get hurt and keeps adding bizarre chapters to medical journals.
At least the Mets host most of their remaining games. They play 20 at Citi Field the rest of the way and just 12 on the road. A good thing for a club with the most road losses (39) out of all the NL playoff contenders except for the Cubs. So maybe it's a blessing that Chicago takes a 25-39 road record into Flushing, where the Mets (37-24 at home) can pad their playoff chances while inching closer to Chicago for that final wild-card berth.
It's hard to grasp how the Mets went from appalling to gripping in about a month. You just hope they didn't spend all the energy they need to win in October just to reach contention in September.
Follow Jason on Twitter at @JasonKeidel.
