Perhaps Chipper Jones just had the best explanation of all for the Braves’ domination over the Mets.
After his Braves had beaten the Mets 1-0 in Game 3 to take a 3-0 lead in the best-of-seven NLCS, Jones was trying to explain how it was that his team can keep beating the Mets.
How is it that the Braves had before last night won eight of the last nine they have played, or 12 of 15 this year, or 21 of the last 27 over a two-year period?
The Mets spent $75 million to assemble a team that was capable of making it to the playoffs, if not the World Series, but always there is that one roadblock.
It’s not the matchups, Jones says. It’s not overall superiority or that the Braves have the Mets psyched out or that they’ve put a hex on them. In fact, there is no real explanation other than the stars.
“Maybe it’s just destiny,” Jones said after Game 3 Friday night. “Maybe it’s just fate, that this is the way it’s meant to be. We’ve been in positions before where we thought we should win and we were either watching some other team in the World Series or watching someone else’s parade. If the baseball gods aren’t on your side, it ain’t going to happen.”
Perhaps the most amazing thing is that the Braves are doing it without much of a contribution from Jones, whom the Met fans greeted with taunts of “Lar-ry, Lar-ry,” and Larry [stinks],” a reference to his real name, which he doesn’t prefer.
The player who almost singlehandedly beat the Mets in Atlanta in September – with four home runs and seven RBIs – has only one hit in seven at-bats (.143) in the series, with no home runs and no RBIs.
But no matter which way the Mets turn against the Braves, there was always someone to beat them, whether it was Chipper, or John Rocker, Eddie Perez or John Smoltz, Mike Remlinger or Greg Maddux.
Some Brave player was forcing them to try and find another way to the World Series. But this year at least, there is no other way but through Atlanta.
Bobby Valentine said it for everyone before the series started.
“We knew at the beginning of the season that if we want to get there [to the World Series] we knew we would have to go through them,” he said last week. “We want to get there. Look who we have to go through.”
But getting through this team is just not easy. Other teams may beat them, but they don’t beat themselves.
“That’s the sign of an experienced, veteran team,” Turk Wendell said. “Just look how they play, how they pitch. They don’t make mistakes at bad times. They just know what it takes to win.”
More specifically, they know what it takes to beat the Mets, in the regular season and the postseason. The Diamondbacks thought they had the Mets’ number, winning seven of the nine games they played in the regular season. But they didn’t have the killer spirit in the postseason; not the way the Braves do.
According to Jones, the Mets are not 20 percent as good as the Braves, even though they had won only 20 percent of the games this year. In fact, he said, they are capable of winning any game against Atlanta.
“They know they can beat us,” he said after Game 3. “They’ve just come up a little short. Both teams have a lot of talent. Our pitchers just seem to take it upon themselves to up their game when it counts. I don’t think we’re in their heads or anything like that, I think it’s just a fluke.”
So that was the approach the Mets took going into last night’s Game 4. They hadn’t even beaten them twice in a row, let alone four consecutive times, since last year.
Down 3-0 in the series, the Mets were looking to become the first team in baseball history to wipe out that deficit and win a series. Only two teams unprofessional sports have done it, the 1975 Islanders and the 1942 Maple Leafs, so it was always a near impossible task.
“Only two teams have ever come back from being two games out with three to play,” GM Steve Phillips said. “We were one of them. Why can’t we be the first team to come back from 3-0?”