NEW YORK – Alex Wood only made one costly mistake Tuesday night against the Mets, but with the way the Braves are hitting that was one too many.
Juan Lagares’ two-run homer in the fourth inning was the decisive blow for the Mets in a 3-2 series-opening win Tuesday against the Braves, who’ve lost four out of their past six games and scored three runs or fewer in all but one in that stretch. They hit into four double plays.
“It just killed us, four double plays,” said manager Fredi Gonzalez, whose Braves remained 7 1/2 games behind first-place Washington in the National League East standings with 30 games left in the season.
The Braves were tied with Pittsburgh in the wild-card standings, a game behind San Francisco for the second wild-card spot pending the outcome of the Giants’ late game against Colorado.
Wood (9-10) gave up five hits, three runs and one walk in seven innings and fell to 0-2 in his past four road starts despite a 2.00 ERA in those games. The Braves have scored two or fewer runs while he’s been in the game in five of his past six starts, including all four road games.
The Braves’ last gasp came after Justin Upton led off the ninth with a single, his third hit of the night, and Chris Johnson promptly grounded into a double play for the second time in the game and 20th this season, third-most in the NL.
“I picked a couple of bad times to hit ground balls,” Johnson said. “Couple of hits there in the spots where I came up probably could have changed the game a little bit. I stunk.”
Mets starter Dillon Gee (5-6) had been winless with an ERA pushing 6 since the All-Star break, but against the Braves he did what he usually does. The right-hander gave up six hits, two runs and two walks in 6 2/3 innings, improving to 6-4 with a 2.79 ERA in 14 career starts against them.
In five starts against them over the past 14 months, Gee is 3-1 with a 1.50 ERA.
“Obviously we had some opportunities and some balls that we missed,” said Upton, who was 3-for-3 with a walk in four plate appearances, while the rest of the Braves had five hits. “We maybe got a little aggressive at times, including myself in my third at-bat (infield single). It’s one of those things, man. We’ve just got to play better.”
Gee was 0-5 with a 5.71 ERA in his past seven starts, and had allowed 17 walks in 36 innings over his past six starts. Against the Braves he issued two walks, including Upton to lead off the second inning. He was erased when Johnson grounded into a double play.
“We had people on base,” Upton said. “Their pitcher made pitches to get out of jams, or before we could get him into a jam. That’s part of the game. We’ve just got to keep our heads up.”
Gee had given up four or more earned runs in five of his previous seven starts, and pitched more than six innings only twice in that span. Against the Braves, he recorded 11 outs in the first 11 batters and didn’t give up a hit until Freddie Freeman’s two-out double in the fourth inning.
Upton followed by lining a game-tying double to the left-center gap after Freeman advanced on a wild pitch, his 21st RBI in 16 games.
“He’s swinging the bat really well,” Gonzalez said. “Now we’ve just got to get some people (on base) in front of him.”
With the Braves hoping to get a shutdown inning from Wood after tying the score, he instead gave up a leadoff double to Travis d’Arnaud to start the bottom of the fourth. Next up was Lagares, who pounced on a full-count changeup left over the plate, driving it to the left-field seats to give the Mets a 3-1 lead.
Wood retired the last 12 batters he faced following the homer.
“I don’t know if I got better or if they kind of sat back, hoping that would hold up,” he said. “Either way, we managed to get through the last three or four innings unscathed. It’s just frustrating when you don’t get a shutdown (inning) after we tied the ball game up.”
Lagares was 1-for-8 with four strikeouts against Wood before Tuesday, when he singled and homered in his first two at-bats. D’Arnaud and Lagares hit consecutive singles to start the second inning, and the Mets took a 1-0 lead on Ruben Tejada’s one-out single.
Gee had allowed eight hits and four runs in 5 2/3 innings of most recent start Tuesday at Oakland, and was pitching on two extra days of rest against the Braves. Whether it was the extra rest or the Braves’ ongoing offensive woes, he bounced back with just his second quality start since the3 All-Star break.
The Braves, after totaling 33 runs and 10 homers during a five-game winning streak against Oakland and Pittsburgh through Aug. 19, have 18 runs and four homers in six games since, including four at Cincinnati’s hitter-friendly ballpark.
“We’re real streaky,” Johnson said. “We either get on a roll, or we get on a roll the other way. It’s something we’ve been trying to figure out all year. Hopefully we can get on a good roll, I guess. I don’t know, it’s just one of those weird things with this team.”
