ATLANTA — A season ago, only one win separated the Mets and Braves inside the National League East. That was the tiebreaker earned by the Braves in their sweep of the teams' final series in 2022.
Now, fast-forward to the final meeting of the two teams in the 2023 season, and the Braves are the talk of baseball, while the Mets' June nose-dive led to a change in the front office's approach.
"I think right now anybody would trade places to be winning the division or tied for the division or whatever, that’s where we would have rather been," Mets general manager Billy Eppler said at the deadline, "but these are our circumstances, and so if we can expedite that and enhance the farm system top to bottom, I think we had to look at that.