If Terry Collins was the late, great Herb Brooks, he would be at Turner Field until midnight running infield drills:

However, this is the majors, and I’m sure the Wilpons aren’t paying for two different flights. 

As much as I would like to get on Jon Niese for today, it’s not his fault. I’d don’t care if Collins sat a number of starters including Yoenis Cespedes and David Wright, you’re expected to play fundamental baseball. On a side note, the Mets were only charged with two errors. The official scorer had an equally bad day. 

Lucas Duda had two miscues that helped give away the 2-0 lead the Mets earned on Michael Conforto‘s two run homer. Subsequent leads disappeared behind Daniel Murphy and Juan Uribe misplays. By the way, Duda and Murphy are everyday players, and Uribe is a good defensive player. 

By some miracle, Niese was on the long side when Tim Stauffer would make his Mets debut. It was quickly first and third with no outs, and Stauffer got a tapper right back to him. Instead of getting the lead runner, he went for the double play. The score was then tied 4-4. 

Stauffer would come out again in the eighth. He leave the game after allowing an “infield single.”  Dario Alvarez would not continue his recent good play allowing the inherited runner to score. He allowed a runner to score, and he left some ducks on the pond. Bobby Parnell came into the game. To be fair, Parnell (who earned the win) was not bad today as the inherited runners would score off a Curtis Granderson misplay in right. After eight innings, it would be 7-4 Braves. 

However, these Mets are hard to kill. Even with two outs in the ninth, they would come back to tie the game. Juan Lagares hit a double just out of the reach of the diving Nick Markakis. Granderson would walk, and Murphy would hit an improbable three run homer. 

In the tenth, the Braves imploded.  With a chance to get out of the inning with runners on first and third unscathed. Sure enough, with two outs, they threw the ball away allowing Kirk Nieuwenhuis to score the go-ahead run. The Braves would then walk the ballpark to load the bases AND walk home two runs. 

Addison Reed would get the save. He had to work around an error by Ruben Tejada because, why not?  It was a fitting end to an absolutely ugly game. They had no business winning the game, but they did because the Braves are terrible and the Mets are resilient.
Good job by Collins allowing his guys in the field and pen to fully rest. The Mets won’t need to win another game until October, and he managed accordingly. As I noted, his managing is really getting better lately. 

In any event, the Mets won a game they shouldn’t have. They won’t get away with this in October, but they showed the will to win that’s important in October. In any event, it’s always a good day when the Mets win. Today is a good day.