Atlanta absorbed a 14-3 loss in New York, shuffled its bullpen, and now faces a doubleheader with the trade deadline coming Monday.
Losing a game 14-3 usually means the plan fell apart somewhere.
For the Braves, Monday night in New York was closer to the plan holding up, as strange as that sounds.
Walt Weiss watched the game tip the wrong way, decided the night was no longer worth chasing, and let one pitcher carry the damage so the rest of his bullpen could breathe.
Managers make quiet choices like that one all the time, and most nights nobody notices.
This one played out in front of everybody, with the score getting uglier by the inning, which is why his explanation afterward was worth hearing.
A Rough Night That Got Away in the Middle Innings
Martín Pérez gave Atlanta five innings and left with the game tied 3-3, after Ozzie Albies pulled the Braves even with his 18th homer of the season, a two-run shot in the fourth.
Francisco Lindor kept answering with a triple and two home runs while driving in six, and once Marcus Semien's two-run shot put the Mets ahead in the sixth, the rest of the night belonged to Connor Thomas.
Weiss left the lefty out there for almost three full innings, and the Mets pounded him for 11 runs on 10 hits before Jorge Mateo recorded the final out of the eighth.
Atlanta scored in the first and the fourth and never again, while Connor Thomas's rough night turned a close game into a blowout.
Why the Leverage Arms Never Moved
It looked bad while it was happening, but Weiss said afterward that it was the plan all along.
His trusted relievers were only pitching if Atlanta grabbed a lead, so once the game stayed tied and then slipped away, Thomas was going to finish it no matter the score.
Weiss laid out the reasoning afterward, via The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
"We were in back-to-back extra-inning games. We're in the middle of 17 [games] in a row. We just couldn't push the issue [Monday]. We couldn't chase anything. Even in a tie game, we couldn't afford to chase that with our leverage guys. It's where we're at today."
That thinking is easy to defend given how much Atlanta has riding on the late-inning duo the Braves have built.
A lopsided loss counts the same as a close one in the standings, and burning fresh arms in a game that had already tipped would have been managing for the box score instead of the week ahead.
Weiss has seen a pitching plan fall apart on him before, and this time he simply refused to let one bad night become two.
A Fresh Arm
It landed on Thomas, who was optioned to Triple-A Gwinnett on Wednesday while right-hander Elieser Hernández had his contract selected to give the bullpen a fresh arm.
Thomas leaves with a 21.32 ERA over two appearances, an ugly number that says more about one assignment than his ability.
Tuesday's game in New York was postponed, so the Braves and Mets play two on Wednesday, with the opener starting in the afternoon.
Atlanta entered Wednesday at 62-44 while the Mets sat at 45-62, and that gap is exactly why Weiss can make a call like this one and move on without apologizing for it.
