Jacob deGrom leaves with elbow injury, Mets get blown out by Braves

Maybe we’ll all laugh about this one a few months from now. But at the moment, the Mets’ loss to the Braves on Wednesday night feels like much more than one loss in a long regular season.

The biggest news of the night was, by far, that Jacob deGrom left the game early with a hyper-extended elbow. Mets manager Mickey Callaway said after the game that deGrom suffered the injury while taking a swing. Before and after that swing, he pitched remarkably well, putting up four easy zeroes against a daunting Braves lineup.

But the Mets only lasted an inning after deGrom’s departure before things started to unravel, and they quickly went from being down 1-0 to 3-0 to 7-0. It’s hard to blame a team for putting up that kind of performance when something of the magnitude of a deGrom injury happens, but there was still a chance that it would have been a game, even when things stood at 1-0 after the top of the sixth.

The big story after the game would have been deGrom’s injury regardless of the outcome. But the combination of a loss to a division rival and that injury only served to make things feel that much worse.

Maybe deGrom will miss minimal time and come back looking like the incredibly dominant pitcher he was in his four innings of work in this game. But if it turned out to be the turning point in the season, nobody could really say they were shocked.

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What’s WPA?

Big winners: Jacob deGrom, +20.8% WPA
Big losers: Paul Sewald, -23.6% WPA
Teh aw3s0mest play: Ozzie Albies flies out to left with a runner on second in the sixth, +6.4% WPA
Teh sux0rest play: Ender Inciarte hits a two-run home run in the seventh, -20.0% WPA
Total pitcher WPA: -8.7% WPA
Total batter WPA: -41.3% WPA
GWRBI!: Freddie Freeman