Tuesday night’s matchup between the New York Mets and the Atlanta Braves wasn’t supposed to be this spicy—not this year, not with the Braves dragging through a rough season while the Mets are riding high in the standings like they finally remembered how baseball works.
A 13-game gap in the NL East before the first pitch? Yeah, let’s say expectations were lukewarm at best. But that’s baseball, baby. Even when the rivalry feels like it’s on a smoke break, the drama finds a way.
A Tied Game Turns on a Dime for Braves
And drama showed up right on time in the top of the ninth inning.
Game tied, 4-4. Soto leads off and slaps a single. Then comes Pete Alonso, the big bat you want at this exact moment, swinging like Thor in a slumpbuster. He gets ahold of one, and it looks promising—but Ronald Acuña Jr., doing Ronald Acuña Jr. things, tracks it down at the wall. One out.
Here’s where the baseball gods decided to get all theatrical.
Soto, who should’ve been casually jogging back to first, is suddenly caught in no-man’s land. He’s between first and second, looking around like he’s asking for directions on the base paths. Turns out he wasn’t sure if Acuña caught the ball or if it smacked off the wall. And he waited—too long—for the umpire’s call. That’s all Acuña needed. Laser beam back to the infield. Double play. Two outs. Rally crushed.
A Costly Misread
The Mets went from threatening in the ninth to flatlining in record time. The crowd at Truist Park could feel it—what could’ve been a go-ahead inning with Soto on and Alonso possibly moving him over, or it turned into a deflating two-out, nobody-on situation. Blink, and the inning’s done.
And you can probably guess how that ended. Extra innings heartbreak. Braves steal it, 5-4.
Finger-Pointing and Frustration
After the game, Soto didn’t mince words. He pointed the finger squarely at the umpire. “We rely on the umpires,” he said, still visibly annoyed. “The goal is to look for the umpire and make sure he makes the right call, but he just took way too long.”
You can see Soto’s point. He’s trying to make a split-second decision that could swing the game. If he guesses wrong? He’s toast either way. But here’s the catch—literally and figuratively—if Acuña makes the play (which he did) and Soto doesn’t hustle back, that hesitation becomes a highlight for the wrong reason.
This is the kind of brain-cramp moment that haunts players in tight races or big games. And while it didn’t shift the standings much—the Mets are still flying high—the moment was a stark reminder: no matter how wide the gap in the standings, these rivalry games still pack a punch.
