ATLANTA – Lose to the Braves, rinse, repeat.
The script changes somewhat from game to game, but the overriding theme is the Mets can’t beat their chief NL East rival, continuing the torment from last season, when the Braves stole the division in the final week.
Wednesday night, it was Adam Ottavino’s turn to play the goat for the Mets.
The veteran reliever surrendered a two-run homer to Michael Harris II in the eighth inning for the margin of defeat in the Mets’ 7-5 loss to the Braves at Truist Park.
The Mets lost their fifth straight and fell to two games below .500 on a night when they had a scoring flurry early before going flat in the late innings.
The Braves have won six straight in this ballpark against the Mets dating to 2022, which included a three-game sweep late last season that all but cemented the NL East crown for Atlanta.
Ottavino entered with the go-ahead run on second base in the eighth following Marcell Ozuna’s double and got the second out of the inning before Harris homered over the center-field fence, delivering the crushing blow to the Mets.
Manager Buck Showalter tried to get Max Scherzer through the sixth but got burned as the Mets’ co-ace allowed two runs with two outs — giving the Braves a 5-4 lead — and had to be removed before he completed the inning.
Scherzer struck out 10 batters (the first time this season he has reached double digits) over 5 ²/₃ innings, in which he surrendered five earned runs on 11 hits.
Dominic Leone got the final out in the sixth and retired the two batters he faced in the seventh.
Pete Alonso departed the game in the first inning after he was drilled in the left wrist by a 97-mph fastball from Charlie Morton.
The first baseman was diagnosed with a contusion to the wrist — X-rays were negative — and is considered day-to-day.
Fans who had been booing Alonso as he stepped to the plate after he taunted Braves pitcher Bryce Elder the previous night, cheered when the Mets star got plunked and hit the ground.
On Tuesday, Alonso had blasted a slider from Elder into the left-field seats in the third inning and was heard on a microphone in the dugout yelling, “Throw it again, please!” toward the pitcher.
After Alonso exited the game Wednesday, Brett Baty’s broken-bat RBI single gave the Mets a 1-0 lead. But Morton rebounded to strike out Starling Marte and avoid further damage.
Francisco Alvarez blasted a two-out homer in the second inning, extending the Mets’ lead to 2-0. The homer was the ninth of the season for Alvarez, who snapped an 0-for-15 skid with his shot into the left-field seats.
Scherzer struck out seven over his first three innings, but got beat by soft contact in the fourth, allowing three straight infield singles that pulled the Braves within 2-1.
Orlando Arcia’s swinging bunt for an infield hit with two outs drove in Austin Riley, who had singled leading off the inning.
Tommy Pham’s two-run homer in the fifth inning increased the Mets’ lead to 4-1. Pham, who had entered the game in the first to replace Alonso in the lineup, homered for the third time in his last 12 games.
Francisco Lindor’s two-out double started the threat.
The Braves countered in the bottom of the inning, receiving a two-run homer from Sean Murphy that sliced the Mets’ lead to 4-3. Riley’s two-out single against Scherzer had kept the inning alive.
Arcia just missed hitting a game-tying homer in the sixth — the ball hit high off the right-field wall and went for a double.
The ensuing batter, Harris, stroked an RBI double that tied it 4-4 before Ronald Acuña Jr.’s single gave the Braves their first lead of the night.
The Mets loaded the bases in the seventh — Jeff McNeil singled between walks to Brandon Nimmo and Lindor — and tied it 5-5 on Pham’s sacrifice fly to the right-field fence.
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