ATLANTA – Throughout their uncanny dominance of the Mets, Atlanta has seemingly always been able to get the key hit with men on base, pouncing on the Amazin’s mistakes like Jaws on a surfer.
But last night, with the Mets reeling and in danger of being swept out of Turner Field, the Braves left the bases loaded three times and let the
Mets off the deck.
Atlanta loaded the bases in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings, the last with just one out.
But it didn’t matter who was pitching – Al Leiter, John Franco or Armando Benitez – or who was hitting – Brian Jordan, Andruw Jones, Keith Lockhart, or Wally Joyner. The results were the same; stranded runners and squandered chances in a 6-3 Met win.
“We have nobody to blame but ourselves, right there in the sixth, seventh and eighth,” Chipper Jones said. “If we could’ve gotten a big hit, put a crooked number up instead of pecking away … but we didn’t.”
They didn’t look like the team that had used clutch hitting to beat the Mets in all 10 of their previous September games here.
They didn’t manage a baserunner against Al Leiter until Walt Weiss reached with one out in the sixth on a Robin Ventura error.
But Rafael Furcal’s RBI single cut the lead to 3-1, and they loaded the bases for Jordan. But the majors’ leading hitters vs. lefties popped up, slamming his bat in disgust.
The Braves cut the lead to 3-2 in the seventh on a Weiss RBI bloop, but blew another golden opportunity when Reggie Sanders, running from first, thought the throw has going home; but LF Timo Perez alertly threw behind Sanders for what turned out to be a huge out at second.
“I made a very bad mistake. I got too aggressive in that situation, and got picked off. It’s frustrating,” Sanders said. “We fought as well as we can, but we just weren’t able to get some runs in.”
Franco relieved Leiter after Steve Sisco’s single; but he clearly had no control, walking Furcal to load the bases and throwing three straight balls to Andruw Jones.
The Braves contend he threw four straight, but home plate ump Bruce Froemming called Franco’s high pitch a strike, a call that had Bobby Cox cursing in the dugout. Jones swung at ball four, and popped to right.
“I just had to take [the fourth pitch] right there, see if I could get a walk,” Andruw Jones said. “I thought it was high, but that’s the ump’s strike zone. It’s all about me; I still had two strikes to [go]. We could’ve played better. We had chances to score a couple more runs, and we didn’t.”
