ATLANTA — OK, we can argue for days to come that the Commissioner's Office should have been more aggressive, that the Braves shouldn't have been so greedy, that the Mets should have played just one make-up game in Atlanta this season so they wouldn't get into a tight spot down the stretch.
Ok, to deal with all of this, tune into your local talk show, there's no shortage of angles and hostility available.
But the Mets should have a maximum of 24 hours to pump their fists at the sky and blame everyone from Rob Manfred to Mother Nature to everyone flying under the Atlanta Braves corporate flag.
And while it may be brutal no matter what the schedule is, it's important to remember how terrible it would be if it didn't include playoff games — and the Mets are still in control of whether that happens.
They'll have a ton of excuses, but they can't accept any of them. The baseball schedule is brutal when everything goes right. And every team, every player, manager, coach, etc. knows it won't. Knowing how tough the schedule is, all involved can only hope to control their own destiny when it comes to playing games in October.
And after all the unsettling events that followed in Atlanta over the past few days, the Mets were in control.
They lost 5-1 to the Braves on Tuesday night in a city the team will never forget, perhaps their worst game in weeks, and they may have to return to the city on Monday for a doubleheader with three games in Milwaukee in between, so a return to Atlanta will have to wait.
The Mets started the season with three straight losses to the Brewers, and a three-game winning streak in Milwaukee could help them close out their regular schedule, perhaps even be enough to secure a playoff berth and avoid a return trip to Atlanta next week.
The Brewers are already the NL Central champions and are all but locked in the No. 3 seed in the NL. They've already shown this weekend they're not going to push their starting pitchers to win games, and with the No. 3 seed potentially facing the No. 6 Mets, it's hard to imagine them showing their best against the Mets in a best-of-three series at American Family Field next week.
Additionally, Francisco Lindor, who has missed eight games, was scheduled to play if the team played Wednesday night at Atlanta, otherwise he will have two more days of rest heading into this final game.
Meanwhile, the Royals need to win this weekend to advance to the playoffs, so the Braves will take advantage of everything Kansas City has to offer at Truist Park. The Braves haven't announced who their starting pitchers will be against the Royals, but if they stick with it, it will likely be Chris Sale, Max Fried and Charlie Morton. If there's a game on Monday, Atlanta could have the advantage in starting pitching, with All-Star Reinaldo Lopez coming off the disabled list and Spencer Schwellenbach pitching well late in the season, holding the Mets to one run in seven innings on Tuesday.
Still, with the win, the Braves still trailed the Mets by one game, and both teams still had a chance to advance if the Diamondbacks continued to falter late in the series.
But if this is the Mets-Braves story, the question remains: if not now, when? The only Acuña available for either team for the remainder of the season is the Mets' Luis Angel. National League MVP Ronald Jr. last played in late May. Before Tuesday's game against the Mets, Atlanta manager Brian Snitker announced that star third baseman Austin Riley, who last played in mid-August, will not return. Ace candidate Spencer Strider has made two starts but has been rested for the season.
The Mets have to figure out how to win more games than this weakened Braves team, no matter how badly the logistics of the series in Atlanta were handled and no matter how difficult the upcoming schedule may be.
Then again, it would be even worse if the Mets went home without the playoffs. The schedule is awful as it is. All of that has to be cleared up by the time the Mets get to Milwaukee on Thursday. All that matters is that the Mets are taking their fate into their own hands in late September and into October.
If they'd been told in March that they'd have to play in a different city every day during the final week of the regular season, they probably would have agreed.
Finding an alibi or making up an excuse may be easy now, but that's for losers, and the Mets still have a chance to finish the regular season as winners.
