Mets have golden opportunity to exorcise demons in Atlanta

ATLANTA — This was not a series lacking in storylines.

There was the meeting of the Acuñas , Luisangel (active) and Ronald Jr. (inactive with injury). The two exchanged jerseys in the media room at Truist Park. And in an, um, interesting 10 minutes or so, Ronald hung out near the Mets dugout gabbing with his brother, friends, family and Mets — and ultimately the siblings took a picture … with Mets owner Alex Cohen.

There was Francisco Lindor still not giving a name to his injury , but revealing he underwent a bone scan Monday that showed no structural problems. He increased his workload prior to the series opener Tuesday and seemed to be running better, while still putting on shoes more gingerly than normal. He continued to say he was trending in the right direction and was hoping to be available, perhaps in this series. But he did not start for the eighth straight game.

And hovering over it all — literally — was Tropical Storm Helene . Gov. Brian Kemp declared a state of emergency in Georgia, bracing for a storm which was threatening to hit land as a Category 3 hurricane. This dominated pre-series discussion with talking points including wonder why a game (or two) was not played on Monday’s mutual day off, why two games weren’t being played Tuesday, why the series was not moved to a more climate-friendly neutral site, concern if any game could be played Wednesday and if an ark might be needed to get out of town Thursday.

Also, concerns if game(s) don’t get played over the next few days will the teams have to reconvene Monday — a day after the regular season ends and a day before the wild-card round begins — to complete the schedule and determine which teams are actually in the postseason.

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Which, of course, circles back to the reason why the Acuñas were together and Lindor was trying to will his way back onto a field and the team and league were trying to find windows to play.

These games were loaded with implications for the 2024 season. And even more than that for these Mets.

This city and the franchise that plays here has spent much of the last quarter century dominating the NL East and torturing the Mets and their fans. Thus, the Mets had a chance to not only win their way into the playoffs, but also damage the Brave chances of doing the same. Thus, in the strongest way of the Steve Cohen/David Stearns/Carlos Mendoza first year together, there was a chance to establish that this was a new era for the Mets.

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Cohen suggested he did not sense the need for an exorcism because the roster has changed so much from the penultimate regular-season series of 2022 — when the Braves last squashed the Mets dreams — to the penultimate series this year. And certainly so much has changed from the late 1990s, when these horrors began, that Cohen said it simply was not in the muscle memory of his current group.

But it is in the craw and the minds of an entire fan base. So it lives. And if an entire relationship cannot be changed over three days (weather permitting), some significant page-turning can occur.

“For us, there is only one way [to rid the legacy of this series] and it’s to go out and do it,” Carlos Mendoza said. “You gotta get it done on the field. Before that, it is going to be a story. It is right there [to change].”

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The Braves swept three games at Turner Field to end the 1998 regular season and keep the Mets out of the playoffs. The following season, again at Turner, the Braves eliminated the Mets in the NLCS. Different stadium (Truist), same story in 2022, when the Mets showed up leading the NL East by a game with six to play and had Jacob deGrom, Max Scherzer and Chris Bassitt lined up, yet got swept out of first and wound up in a wild-card series and early elimination.

There is more from John Rocker’s New York bashing, to Chipper Jones on-field bashing — then trolling the Mets further by naming a son Shea. And there is that the Braves joined the NL East in 1994 and since have won the division 18 times with two World Series titles compared to two for the Mets and no championships.

The Mets began this series 25-36 all-time at Truist. Being swept in late September 2022 meant that the Mets did a champagne toast to note a playoff entrance, but not the full clubhouse drench. Steve Cohen has his 50th high school reunion Saturday and is hosting it at Citi Field. But if the Mets can clinch a playoff spot that day, he said he is going to Milwaukee. Because there could be other high school reunions, but only one first time since buying the franchise for $2.4 billion to wade into the middle of a champagne spray-a-thon.

The Mets can have their owner have his soak and reunion too if they could win two games at Truist. That would get them into the 2024 postseason and begin to change the narrative of the relationship with the Braves.

That is quite a storyline in Atlanta.

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