The Braves had spent just eight days in first place as of Tuesday, but it was enough to win a fifth-straight NL East title on the next-to-last day of their 2022 campaign. But that's a really simple way to describe what happened.
Atlanta's surge from 10.5 games back of the Mets on June 1 was not just their biggest division deficit ever overcome, it was one of the biggest division deficits any team has overcome. But even that doesn't adequately cover it.
While that 10.5-game erasure is the number that gets all the attention, there's a story within the story, and the best way to say it is this: The Braves had to erase a deficit nearly that big a second time.
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Let me say it again, with more precision: Yes, the Braves technically erased a 10.5-game lead to win the division. But in actuality, they almost erased it once, then later erased a second deficit almost as big. And that second surge was arguably more impressive than the first. Seriously.
To tell that story, we need to go back to July 23. That's the night when a 7-2 win over the Angels put the Braves just a half-game behind the Mets. That 10.5-game lead was all but gone, thanks to an incredible Atlanta run that started June 1 and saw the team play at a .761 winning percentage (35-11) through June and most of July. The team OPS during this time was an astonishing .810. They averaged nearly six runs per game, while the team ERA was 3.14.
It appeared as though the script was about to be flipped — but then it wasn't.
The Mets stayed good, the Atlanta surge hit a dam and, thanks to a two-week period of uneven Braves play, the Mets pushed their lead back to seven games on Aug. 9, fueled in large part by taking four of five from the Braves in a series at Citi Field from Aug. 4 to 7— a series in which the Mets overmatched Atlanta in every aspect. The scourging was so thorough that it appeared New York had sent a message: Your surge was cute, but this is officially our division.
Not so fast.
This is where the Braves' second surge began. Granted, seven games isn't 10.5 games. But it's not exactly a minor obstacle — even though the Braves treated it like one.
An eight-game winning streak that started Aug. 9 in Boston and included two wins against New York in Atlanta (and earned the Braves an ice cream machine) whittled the Mets' lead down to three games.
This is where it's important to point out that the Mets did not choke anything away during this stretch, despite certain social media narratives. From Aug. 9 through Aug. 26, the Mets went 10-7 in a stretch that included four series against three playoff teams (Phillies, Braves and Yankees) and two against the lowly Reds and Rockies. Certainly not a bad outcome. The problem is that the Braves went 15-2 during that stretch against the Red Sox, Marlins, Mets, Astros, Pirates and Cardinals.
That's pretty much how the season went for both teams after June 1. The Mets won a lot, but the Braves won a lot more.
In fact, from June 1, when the Braves started a 14-game winning streak and played at a 113-win pace for the rest of the season, the Mets went 67-44. That's still a .604 winning percentage and a 98-win pace over a full season. This was nothing resembling a collapse. That's not to say the Mets didn't have some regrettable losses — a three-game sweep by the Cubs at home in September certainly comes to mind — but most of it can be chalked up to normal baseball ebbs and flows. Unfortunately for the Mets, the Braves' ebbs and flows were darn near paranormal.
An example of the outlandish stats from their 15-2 August surge:
— They had a team OPS of .830.
— They averaged nearly seven runs and 10 hits per game.
— Their team ERA was 2.64.
— They struck out 172 batters in 152 innings (that's an average of 10.1 per game)
Side note: They did all that scoring and all that winning while Austin Riley and Dansby Swanson, arguably the team's co-MVPs to that point, each had an OPS well below .700 during the stretch.
As August turned to September, the Braves kept their collective foot on the gas.
Yet another eight-game winning streak Sept. 1-9 propelled Atlanta into first place by a half game for one day, knocking the Mets out for the first time since April 11. But New York leap-frogged back in front a day later and, from there, the Mets' lead fluctuated between a half-game and 2.5 games over the next two weeks.
After a walk-off Mets win that followed a walk-off Braves loss on Sept. 28, the Mets took a one-game lead heading into the crucial three-game series in Atlanta last weekend. It did not end well for New York.
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In the biggest series of the year for either team, and with the NL East title the de facto prize for the series winner, the Braves spanked Mets aces Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer, then beat up on Chris Bassett, a very good pitcher in his own right, to complete an improbable three-game sweep that put them two games up on the Mets with three to play and, more importantly, gave Atlanta the tie-breaker in the season series and a magic number of one.
Then, finally, on Tuesday night in Miami, the Braves beat the Marlins 2-1 to shave the magic number to zero, capture their fifth straight NL East title and earn a coveted bye in the first round of the postseason. They finished 101-61, atop the division with a crown claimed through an impossibly strong surge that made the Mets' own 101-win season seem far too insufficient.
The story almost boggles the mind. The Braves were 23-27 after play on May 31. They were flat, sloppy. They were beating themselves with lots of self-inflicted wounds. There was no indication that a nearly .700 winning percentage would accompany the sunrise June 1 and follow them for the next four months. But baseball is a weird beast.
This was the least expected and probably the most satisfying of the five straight division crowns for this Atlanta bunch, who will try to become the first repeat World Series champion in more than 20 years.
Of course, it's hard to repeat as champions. But then, it's hard to erase a 10.5-game deficit. And it's definitely hard to erase a 10.5-game deficit and then also erase a seven-game deficit.
In other words, the resilience and relentlessness that has defined the Braves' season might not be finished just yet.
