Routs can be painful to watch, and the Atlanta Braves getting torched 14-3 by the Mets on Monday certainly qualified as a form of torture. Martin Perez didn't have his best stuff, and the game got out of hand in a hurry once Braves manager Walt Weiss brought in reliever Connor Thomas. In fact, things went sideways so quickly that Weiss just opted to have Thomas wear it rather than burn any more of the Braves' overworked bullpen in a lost cause.
These sorts of decisions are not new. With as heavily as the Braves had to use their bullpen in their series against the Orioles, they were going to have some arms down and others they would prefer to stay away from. How many times have we seen lesser relievers or even position players have to come into games for that exact reason?
Well, don't tell Mets broadcasters Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez, who, despite having played a combined 30 seasons in the big leagues, decided to manufacture some drama over the decision to leave Thomas in the game.
"Poor kid - you want to give him a hug...literally I'm sick to my stomach"
— SNY Mets (@SNY_Mets) July 28, 2026
"I'm not a happy camper at all, pretty disgusted with it"
Keith and Ron didn't like the Braves leaving Connor Thomas out on the mound to throw 78 pitches and give up 11 runs pic.twitter.com/aR7pefLUnl
Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez's Mets bias was on full display with their whining about Braves' obvious bullpen decision
To be clear, no one with the Braves or their fans wanted Thomas to collapse as spectacularly as he did on Monday. Atlanta NEEDS more lefty help in their bullpen, and Thomas simply did not take advantage of the opportunity. At that point, he was likely to get sent back to the minors almost immediately after the game, and the Braves needed innings covered to preserve their bullpen. This is not rocket science.
Unfortunately, Darling and Hernandez chose to ignore logic and reason and pretended to care about Thomas' fate in order to demonize the Braves. A couple of Google searches will yield a bunch of Mets bullpen meltdowns over the last few years, and we strongly suspect that the Mets dynamic duo in the broadcast booth all of a sudden remembered how bullpen strategy and roster management work when it was their team doing it.
Again, this is just the Mets being the Mets. Their season is in the toilet despite spending the gross national product of a small country on one of the worst rosters in baseball right now. They got the better of the Braves on the field on Monday to be sure, but the Mets' broadcast booth needs to find another way to maintain relevancy other than calling out Atlanta for a completely sane and long-held strategy in the game of baseball.
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