ATLANTA -- David Peterson had Dansby Swanson in a pitcher’s count in the sixth inning Tuesday, and he was working to polish up one of his better starts of the season when things rapidly unraveled. Following a 1-2 slider that missed, catcher Patrick Mazeika asked Peterson for a better breaking ball, setting up low and inside to the Braves’ shortstop. Peterson missed badly again, but in doing so, he appeared to sweep his slider across the top third of the strike zone on the outside corner.
When umpire Andy Fletcher called it a ball, everything changed. Peterson walked Swanson on the next pitch, then allowed a go-ahead two-run homer to Matt Olson to send the Mets toward a 4-1 loss to the Braves, who moved back to within 1 1/2 games of New York for first place in the NL East.
“Against a good team like this, we’re both at the top in the division fighting for that spot,” Peterson said. “I obviously don’t want to give up the lead there. I want to keep us in the ballgame.”
It was a two-batter sequence that altered the tenor of the night. The Mets had been seeking a second straight win over their division rivals. Instead, the Braves punched back at Truist Park, winning despite the fact that for much of the evening, Peterson outpitched rookie phenom Spencer Strider.
Here’s a deeper look at the sequence that upended them:
From strike three to ball three
In the quiet moments following the loss, Peterson still hadn’t watched a replay of the 2-2 pitch to Swanson. In real time, he believed it was a strike. Back in the clubhouse, his teammates confirmed as much.
“But that’s the way baseball goes,” Peterson said. “You get some that are off, and you don’t get some that are in the zone. I wasn’t really super focused on it going into the next at-bat. I was trying to get Olson out the next at-bat. It was really more when I came out, I had heard that it was a clear strike.”
Buck Showalter brought up the pitch almost immediately without prompting in his postgame press conference, though he, too, wasn’t willing to blame Fletcher for the Mets’ undoing.
“There’s a lot of opportunities to make that not matter,” the manager said.
Straightening it out
The first such chance occurred immediately, when Olson came to the plate. In his first matchup with the Braves’ new No. 3 hitter, Peterson had struck him out on a fastball above the strike zone. In Olson’s second at-bat, Peterson had missed his spot, leaving a mistake pitch near the middle of the zone, but Olson had swung under it and flied out to center.
The final matchup was the most competitive of the three. As he eclipsed the 100-pitch mark, Peterson began missing his target a bit more often. Still, Showalter stuck with Peterson for good reason: Olson has struggled against lefties all season, slugging more than 100 points lower against them than right-handed pitchers.
Opening the at-bat with a fastball that he intended to throw outside, Peterson instead leaked the pitch back across the inner half of the plate. Olson fouled it off. His fourth offering was a slider that Olson sent screaming toward the right-field wall, where it fell inches foul. Finally, on his seventh pitch, Peterson left another fastball over the plate.
That one, Olson did not miss.
“I was trying to go more away,” Peterson said. “It was in the zone, middle. I would have liked it to be just above the zone and outside. … It sucks. I missed my spot, and he’s a good hitter and took advantage of it.”
Bullpen management
The immediate result of Olson’s homer was that Showalter came to retrieve Peterson, bringing in Seth Lugo to replace him. Because the Mets now needed multiple innings from Lugo, the move had a trickle-down effect on the rest of the game.
Although Lugo looked dominant to finish the sixth, striking out sluggers Austin Riley and Marcell Ozuna, he was not the same pitcher when he came back out for the seventh. Travis d’Arnaud led off the inning with a single, and Adam Duvall followed with a two-run homer to deepen Lugo’s season-long struggles -- particularly when coming back out after a half-inning of rest.
“They were mistakes he made that he didn’t get away with,” Showalter said. “It’s been a challenge for him at times to put together some things that he’s capable of. But still, that wasn’t what beat us. I know we had a 2-2 pitch to Swanson that was probably strike three.”