Why Do The Atlanta Braves Almost Always Beat The New York Mets?

Forbes

5 hours ago

NEW YORK, NY - JUNE 24: Pete Alonso #20 of the New York Mets tags out Drake Baldwin #30 of the ... More Atlanta Braves at first base in the seventh inning during the game between the Atlanta Braves and the New York Mets at Citi Field on Tuesday, June 24, 2025 in New York, New York. (Photo by Daniel Shirey/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
Only a handful of people have spent as much time this century with both the Braves and Mets than Jeff Francoeur, who opened his career with 730 games for his hometown team before playing 199 games in the Big Apple.
So if he can't figure out the Braves' multi-generational dominance of the Mets, what hope is there for the rest of us?
'It's still so weird, man,' Francoeur said early Tuesday night, before the Braves continued doing their part to try and ruin another Mets season with a come-from-behind 7-3 win. 'I can't fathom the fact.'
To be fair to the Mets, whatever magic they had over the previous two-plus months disappeared before they arrived in Atlanta last Tuesday. The Mets' 1-10 skid started with a sweep two weekends ago at the hands of the Rays, who won the three games at Citi Field in an increasingly convincing manner.
But five straight losses, many in familiarly painful fashion, to the Braves, have underlined the rapidity of the Mets' fall while serving as a reminder of the multi-layered history that may be in the process of repeating itself.
The Braves are 37-41 this season and have a winning record against just four of the other 16 teams they've opposed. Yet they are two wins away from clinching the season series against the Mets for the eighth straight season and the 24th time in 32 seasons since Atlanta joined the NL East in 1994.
The Braves are 28-10 against the Mets since the start of the 2022 season — a span in which the Mets have won six more playoff games than Atlanta.
'The fact that they can't beat them consistently — it's so weird,' said Francoeur, who broadcast Tuesday's game for TBS. 'Right now, I think the Mets are the better team. But something changes when they play.'
The Braves have undoubtedly derived a little more pleasure out of beating the Mets than anyone else this century — some of which stems for how the Mets operated in the before times.
Travis d'Arnaud, the only position player to appear in 200 games for both the Mets and Braves since 2000, said in 2024 that no team makes him angrier than the Mets, who cut him in 2019 after he appeared in just 10 games following his recovery from Tommy John surgery. For good measure, d'Arnaud is hitting .307 against the Mets since leaving the team.
Later in 2019, infielder Adeiny Hechavarria was released by the Mets one day before he would have earned a $1 million roster bonus, He signed with the Braves, whom he helped to an NL East crown while declaring how thankful he was to no longer be with the Mets.
And some of it is the joy hyper-competitive athletes take from vanquishing the same little brother rival over and over and over again. None of the four Braves icons — Francoeur along with Hall of Famers Tom Glavine, Chipper Jones and John Smoltz — in the home broadcast booth could contain their glee June 8, 2023, when Ozzie Albies' walk-off homer capped a third straight comeback win and basically ended the Mets' season.
Afterward, Albies declared sweeping the Mets was '(t)he best feeling.'
'I remember when I got drafted in '02 and then got called up in '05 — when we came up to New York, it was like 'We're gonna kick their butts,'' Francoeur said. 'And that's the thing. Chipper ingrained it. Freddie (Freeman) ingrained it. And so it kind of gets passed down.'
It even trickles down to the non-uniformed staffers. Told Monday the good vibe surrounding the Mets at Citi Field this season might change if the Braves sweep the series, one member of the traveling party said 'From your mouth to God's ears.'
Two more wins by the Braves this week might do a lot more than just change some vibes. Over the last 13 days, the Mets — forever linked with the 2007 and 2008 collapses that cost them playoff berths — have gone from owning baseball's best record and a 5 1/2-game lead over the Phillies in the NL East to clinging to a two-game lead over the Brewers and Cardinals in the race for the last NL wild card berth.
The five wins over the Mets also provides a dangerous spark for the Braves, who are six games behind the Brewers and Cardinals but no strangers to impressive in-season comebacks.
The 2001 Braves were eight games out of first in June before winning the 10th of their record 14 straight division titles. The 2021 team didn't get over .500 until August and won the World Series. A year later, the Mets led the Braves by 10 1/2 games in June and seven games in August before Atlanta finished on a 35-15 kick to win the division (thanks to a tiebreaker gleaned from sweeping the Mets in Atlanta on the final weekend).
Of course, these are the Mets, for whom incredible comebacks are as much a part of the collective experience as agonizing collapses. And there are plenty of memorable moments the Mets have enjoyed at the expense of the Braves.
But the Grand Slam Single, the 10-run eighth-inning comeback on June 30, 2000, Mike Piazza's famous home run hit in the first game in New York after 9/11 and last year's playoff clincher in Atlanta all have one thing in common: They were outliers that didn't categorically change the Braves dominance.
The 1999 NLCS ended with Andruw Jones literally walking it off after the Mets squandered a pair of late-inning leads following a comeback from a six-run first-inning deficit. The 2000 Mets made the World Series without having to play the Braves in October. Two days after Piazza's homer, Armando Benitez blew a save to cost the Mets a sweep and a chance to move within 2 1/2 games of first place. And last season ended two wins shy of the World Series for the Mets.
Last season offered up so many reminders that the Mets are liable to render all this hand-wringing and historical perspective moot by late October or early November. But right now, they are watching history repeat itself in real time…over and over and over again.
'They have outplayed us,' Francisco Lindor said Tuesday night. 'They have played better defense, ran the bases better. They hit better. Overall they have done everything better than us.'
For whatever reason, they usually do.