NEW YORK -- No one got hurt. That was the best that could be said for the Braves' bust of a trip to New York, where the team that collapsed in September was swept by the Mets and got no hits against Jonathon Niese for the first six innings of Sunday's series finale at Citi Field.
The Braves scored the last five runs to make the 7-5 final score seem more respectable than was their performance, but they quickly dismissed any notion of the late-innings flurry taking some sting out of the first season-opening sweep against the Braves in nearly a decade.
“You never want to get on that plane going someplace else after you lose a series or, [worse] yet, get swept,” said manager Fredi Gonzalez, whose Braves were the first Atlanta team swept in a three-game season-opening series since 2003, when Montreal took three at Turner Field.
“It’s hard to look for moral victories when you get swept,” Braves left fielder Matt Diaz said. “So, no, it doesn’t feel any better. It almost stings worse, like, ‘Man, if we would have just done that earlier...’”
The Braves continue their trip with a three-game series at Houston starting Monday. Their home opener is Friday against Milwaukee.
“It’s early -- the third game of the season,” said Braves pitcher Mike Minor (0-1), who ran into a wall in the fifth inning, left without recording an out in the sixth and was charged with six runs, six hits and four walks. “There’s plenty of season left, plenty of games left.”
Ruben Tejada had a career-high four hits for the Mets, including a leadoff double in the first inning that turned into a run. Minor retired the next nine batters -- four by strikeouts -- before giving up another leadoff double in the fourth, followed by two walks and a sacrifice fly. He worked out of that inning without further damage, but the 2-0 deficit already seemed all but insurmountable given the Braves’ offensive woes.
Here’s how bad this Braves offense has been lately, and by lately we mean going back to September: The Braves’ four runs in the seventh inning Sunday were twice as many as they’d totaled in the first 24 innings of the series, and the five runs they pushed across Sunday were only four fewer than their total during the first seven games of an eight-game losing streak going back to Sept. 24.
It’s nearly an identical lineup to last season, so the growing assumption among many is that this is a carryover from last year’s collapse.
“It isn’t,” Gonzalez said. “We’re going to have to keep answering that question, and that’s the only way that these guys won’t forget -- we have to keep answering that question. It always comes up. But it’s forgotten, and this is 2012. If we’re still rehashing 2011, we’re not going in the right direction.”
Yes, the only thing the Braves dismissed quicker than the moral-victory question Sunday was the one about whether this team is suffering a hangover from last year, when the Braves lost 20 of their final 30 games and blew an 8-1/2-game wild card lead in a little over three weeks.
“There’s nobody in here at all thinking about what happened last year,” catcher Brian McCann said. “We won 89 ballgames [in 2011]. We’re a very talented team. Tip your hat -- these guys [Mets] put together some really good at-bats over there. It seems like one through eight, they had a good game plan and they executed it.”
New York outplayed the Braves in every facet of the game on the way to becoming 3-0 for the first time in five years.
The Braves did not execute much of anything offensively for most of the day or the series, and their lefty woes continued. They mustered two hits in five scoreless innings against lefty Johan Santana on opening day and no hits against lefty Niese until Freddie Freeman’s single in the seventh.
They’ll face two more lefty starters in Houston.
Freeman singled through the right side of the infield, where the second baseman would have been if Dan Uggla hadn’t drawn a leadoff walk. The Braves then capitalized on an error when right fielder Lucas Duda missed Diaz’s fly ball and Jason Heyward followed with a two-run double.
McCann added a solo homer in the eighth inning, his first hit of the season and the Braves’ second homer.
“We’re very confident in our lineup,” McCann said, “and we feel like over the course of a season we’re going to pull our weight. This is the first three games. You never want to get swept at any point in the season, but we’ve got to regroup, go to Houston and make this a good road trip.”
McCann also pointed out that the Braves swept Philadelphia in a three-game season-opening series five years ago.
“It’s never good coming into the opening series and getting swept,” McCann said. “But I remember in ’07, we swept the Phillies and they won 100 games [actually 89]. So just stay the course. Once we find our groove we’re going to be a tough team to beat.”
