Bichette's HR barrage helps Mets top 1st place Braves

NEW YORK -- The Mets did not particularly care Friday night that their opponent was the Braves.

“We need to focus on us,” was how president of baseball operations David Stearns put it when asked about the crowded National League playoff picture. “What the rest of the National League is doing right now for us, in my opinion at least, is somewhat irrelevant.”

“You’re facing a really good team, the team with the best record in baseball -- but I think it’s just about us,” echoed manager Carlos Mendoza. “It doesn’t matter who we’re playing. It’s about us playing our best baseball.”

It was with that as a backdrop that the Mets, despite their share of flaws, won a 7-5 game over the Braves at Citi Field behind a Bo Bichette grand slam and another heavy bullpen effort. The win may not have done much to change the NL East or Wild Card races, or even to lift the Mets from last place in the division. But it was enough to prove -- for one night, at least -- that they can compete with the teams they’ll need to beat to grind their way back into postseason contention.

“We have a lot of games left, but this is definitely important,” Bichette said. “This is the best team in the league. They’re going to show up tomorrow and the next day ready to play, too, so we’ve got to do the same.”

One inning after Bichette and Juan Soto greeted Braves starter Spencer Strider with back-to-back homers, the Mets built a two-out rally against Strider on an MJ Melendez double, a Luis Torrens single and a hit batsman. The next batter was Bichette, who launched his third career grand slam over the fence in right. It marked the second time in a month that Bichette homered twice in the first two innings of a game, and the second time in two days that he homered in his first at-bat.

This one gave the Mets plenty of cushion, which proved necessary when their own starter, Nolan McLean, lasted only four innings (due in large part to a 42-pitch second). The bullpen took it from there, with Cionel Pérez and Huascar Brazobán building a significant part of the bridge to closer Devin Williams, who recovered from a 14-pitch at-bat against Mauricio Dubón to record a four-out save for the first time this season.

“We’ll take ugly victories over clean losses,” McLean said. “Any way we can get in the win column as many times as we can, that’s what we’re trying to do. It was a pretty gutsy performance by Devin there.”

In the grand scheme of things, the win meant little. Despite Strider’s early exit due to right elbow and shoulder soreness, the Braves are still very much in control of the NL East race. They still own the best record in the Majors -- better even than the Dodgers.

“They’ve played exceptional on all sides of the ball,” Stearns said before the game. “You can make an argument they’re the best team in baseball right now, or they’ve played the best in baseball right now. They deserve a lot of credit for that, and we have not played [as] consistent. Obviously, we had a very rough stretch in April that put us behind the eight ball, and they deserve to be where they are.”

April, indeed, has meant everything to these teams. The Braves went 22-10 in March/April, while the Mets went 10-21. Since that time, the Braves have gone 23-14 while the Mets have trailed close behind at 21-17. That would only be a 2 1/2-game difference in the standings.

But April did happen, and there’s no undoing it. The NL East is likely out of play for the Mets as a result.

All they can do now is ignore the past, focus on the future and hope that better days continue to dawn.

“We’ve got to prove that things are going to change,” Stearns said. “There's no question we've played better since April, but we still haven’t played consistent enough to get ourselves out of a hole that we dug. We are very aware of that. So we have to prove it. I continue to believe that we have people in the clubhouse who are capable of doing this.”