If there’s one thing to take away from last year’s Mets, it’s that even the slowest of starts is not insurmountable.
The 2024 Mets stumbled to an 0-5 record, then spiraled to an even-bleaker 22-33 mark, before they rebounded with an epic summer surge that they rode all the way to the NLCS.
That should give the Atlanta Braves at least a modicum of hope.
Indeed, the free-falling Braves are the NL East team trying to dig out of an early hole in 2025. Sunday’s 4-0 loss to the Miami Marlins dropped the Braves to 1-8 — a stunning reality even the boldest of baseball prognosticators couldn’t have envisioned.
“I don’t wish this on anybody in a competitive arena,” manager Brian Snitker said last week, after the Braves fell to 0-7. “What we’re going through is tough, very tough.”
It’s a brutal beginning for a Braves team that Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA model projected to win the loaded NL East with 92 wins.
Through nine games, the Braves have scored an MLB-low 24 runs. They’ve managed one run or fewer in five of their eight losses. Atlanta has hit six home runs — the same total the Yankees’ Aaron Judge needed only seven games to reach.
The Braves entered Monday six games behind the division-leading Philadelphia Phillies (7-2) and five games behind the second-place Mets (6-3). Those three teams, all of whom made the playoffs last year, were expected to engage in a season-long struggle for NL East supremacy.
And of course, they still could. The Braves aren’t even one-sixteenth into their season, and a nine-game sample is much too small to provide an accurate predictor of where a team will end up.
But after so many seasons of trying to climb their way up the NL East standings, the Mets must feel good now about being a team that’s being chased, not chasing others.
The Mets, with elevated expectations after their $765-million-signing of Juan Soto, entered Monday’s home series opener against the Marlins tied for the sixth-best record in the majors.
They had won four games in a row, including a sweep of the Toronto Blue Jays in their first series at Citi Field of the season.
And perhaps most encouragingly, there’s plenty of room for the Mets to improve.
Francisco Lindor entered Monday with a .172 average. Juan Soto was hitting .250. That star-powered pair had combined for one home run and six RBI.
The eventual returns of Sean Manaea (oblique) and Frankie Montas (lat) should reinforce a starting rotation that, on paper, appears to present the Mets’ biggest question marks.
Getting back second baseman Jeff McNeil (oblique) and catcher Francisco Alvarez (hand) should help a bottom of the order that’s struggled, too.
At the center of the Mets’ strong start has been the hot-hitting Pete Alonso, who entered Monday with three home runs and 11 RBI, and a deep bullpen with an MLB-best 1.29 ERA.
“We have nasty stuff down there,” reliever Reed Garrett said over the weekend. “We have a lot of guys who are going to come in and execute pitches. Everybody’s done an amazing job.”
And with three come-from-behind wins already, the Mets seem to have carried their never-say-die identity from last season — when they led the majors with eight ninth-inning comebacks — over to this one.
“We saw it a lot last year,” manager Carlos Mendoza said after Saturday’s walk-off win over Toronto. “We got a lot of these guys back. Every year is different. It’s still early, but those are some good signs.”
Again, it’s a small sample size, but the early returns on the Mets are strong.
They still must grapple with the Phillies, who won the NL East last year. And no one is counting out the Braves, who won the division six years in a row from 2018-23.
The Braves have reinforcements coming, too, with catcher Sean Murphy (rib) expected back Tuesday, ace Spencer Strider (elbow surgery recovery) not far behind him, and do-it-all superstar Ronald Acuña Jr. (knee surgery recovery) on track to debut next month.
But no team has made the playoffs after an 0-7 start.
“Those guys in there are more aware of it than y’all are,” Snitker said of his Braves’ shocking struggles. “They feel it. It’s hard. And there’s nothing you can do but to fight your way out of it.”
