QUEENS, NY — The Atlanta Braves socked four home runs against New York Mets pitching to cruise to a 9-2 victory and earn a four-game series split on Sunday afternoon at Citi Field.
A four-run fourth inning off Mets starter David Peterson was sparked by a Matt Olson three-run home run to put the visitors in the driver’s seat for the rest of the day. After the Mets won the opening two games of the four-game series, the Braves rebounded to take the next two, which ultimately upheld their 1.5-game lead for second place in the National League East and the top Wild Card NL Wild Card spot ahead of New York (55-50).
The Mets scored just twice in the final two games of the series, which came on Pete Alonso’s two-run home run in the bottom of the eighth inning with the game well out of reach.
“That’s a good pitching staff,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said. “It’s deep. That’s going to happen where you go through a couple games, innings, stretches where it’s going to be hard. We created traffic… we just couldn’t get that big hit.”
An inability to convert with runners in scoring position derailed the Mets from the jump — they went 1-for-10 with RISP on Sunday — while Peterson cruised through the first three innings on 35 pitches with five strikeouts. Alonso and Tyrone Taylor led off the second and third innings with a double, but neither came around to score.
“They just didn’t really come in the zone al that much,” Alonso said of Braves pitching. “When they did, they did a great job picking corners and, shoot, they did a hell of a job executing.”
Following Atlanta starter Reynaldo Lopez’s escape in the bottom of the third — he would leave his start early with forearm tightness — the Braves got to Peterson in the fourth. Austin Riley walked and Marcel Ozuna singled to lead off the frame for Olson, who smacked a hanging slider from Peterson into the second deck of the right-field seats to put the visitors up 3-0.
“It’s kind of what it came down to,” Peterson said. “I think there’s plenty of reasons why [losing the zone] can happen. For me, I didn’t execute early in the count and when you get behind, you have to get back into it. I wasn’t able to do that.”
Peterson continued to struggle, walking Travis d’Arnaud and then throwing a pair of wild pitches that awarded him second base and then allowed him to score.
“He was throwing a lot of pitches that were balls coming out of the hand,” Mendoza said. “They stopped swinging, they made some good adjustments.”
Taylor led off the fifth with a double and seemed destined to open the Mets’ ledger on Sunday when Ben Gamel snuck a single up the middle, but he was thrown out at home by Atlanta center fielder Ramon Laureano.
The Braves broke it open in the seventh off reliever Ryne Stanek, recently acquired from the Seattle Mariners, in his team debut. Orlando Arcia led the inning off with a solo home run before Stanek hit Adam Duvall. Austin Riley launched his 14th of the season into the left-field seats to make it 7-0.
Ramon Laureano took reliever Jake Diekman out for the Braves’ fourth home run of the game — a two-run shot with no outs in the eighth inning.
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