William Contreras and Eddie Rosario hit back-to-back homers off Carlos Carrasco in the second inning, Ronald Acuña Jr. doubled three times and drove in three runs, and the Atlanta Braves obliterated the New York Mets 13-1 Monday night for their seventh straight win.
The second-place Braves moved within 4 1/2 games of New York for the NL East lead and put a brief halt to a hot streak in which the Mets had won 17 out of 20.
Atlanta took a 3-0 lead in the second. After Contreras connected for the 16th time and Rosario went deep for the fourth, the Braves added another run with two outs when Mark Canha lost track of a flyball by Acuña that went over the left fielder’s head and allowed Harris to score from first. Acuña was credited with a double. That transpired before rain prompted umpires to call for the tarp.
Carrasco (13-5, 3.92ERA) allowed three runs in two innings. He returned after the break to get the final out of the inning, but was pulled with left side tightness. Contreras’ homer ended the Mets’ streak of 19 consecutive scoreless innings. Atlanta went up 5-0 in the fourth on Acuña’s RBI double and Swanson’s RBI single. Vaughn Grissom crossed the plate on Acuña’s double, giving the rookie a run scored in each of his first six career games.
The Braves, sent 12 batters to the plate and blew the game open with an eight-run sixth against Mychal Givens, on Michael Harris II’s single, Acuña’s double, Dansby Swanson’s two-run single, Matt Olson’s single and Travis d’Arnaud’s three-run homer.
Braves starter Spencer Strider (7-4 3.04 ERA) returned after the delay and retired 10 of the last 12 batters he faced, the only blemishes a two-out walk to Starling Marte in the third and a leadoff double by Jeff McNeil in the fifth. McNeil advanced to third on the play when Acuña made an errant throw from right-center and scored on a groundout to make it 5-1, New York’s lone run of the evening.
The rookie, was coming off the shortest start of his career, a 6-4 loss at New York on Aug. 7 where he said the Mets got “lucky with their bloop hits, and then backed up his talk in this one. The right-hander struck out four and gave up three hits and one run in five innings.
Acuña, who’s hitting .377 in 14 games this month, has been particularly dangerous against the Mets, batting .370 against them this season with seven doubles, a homer, eight RBIs and five runs.
I used AP to help me with the structure of this article
Comments