Call them this year's version of last year's Yankees, and with the ahead-of-schedule Braves in the Bronx this week, it makes for quite an intriguing series. Who knows, maybe they'll even meet again in October.
And yet when you look at the Braves, flaunting all of their young talent, mostly it's hard not to think about what has gone wrong with Mets.
In short, they have what I thought Sandy Alderson would build when he took over at Citi Field in the fall of 2010, with a roster of young, athletic position players and a stable of impressive pitchers accumulated via the draft or trades, some here already and more in the minors.
No wonder 62-year-old Brian Snitker was enjoying himself talking to reporters in the visiting dugout on Monday before the Braves' extra-inning 5-3 win, admitting he thought his time had passed to be a big-league manager after a career spent in the dugout at various minor-league outposts.
"Yeah, I thought that had come and gone for me," he said.
Then, suddenly, when the organization needed an interim manager upon firing Fredi Gonzalez in 2016, Snitker was summoned from Triple-A, and two years later, he's still here.
"I was OK with never getting that chance," Snitker said, and then he chuckled. "But when they called, I wasn't going to turn it down. I said, 'Sure, I'll take a crack at this thing, see what it's all about.'
"And I'll tell you what, young, athletic players make this game fun. To see them out there, running around, letting it fly, that's a cool thing."
More and more it also seems to be the way baseball is trending. In Ronald Acuna and Ozzie Albies, in fact, the Braves have their version of Gleyber Torres and Miguel Andujar, impactful rookies who, at age 20 and 21, respectively, are even younger than the Yankees' duo.
Snitker, like a lot of baseball people, believe the trend toward youth has a lot to do with how the game has changed at the youth level, with kids of high school age and younger exposed to high-level competition on a national level these days.
"They're out there on the big stage a lot more than they were before," Snitker said, "with all the showcase games, select teams, and what not. They're out there being watched by a lot of people, and I think they become accustomed to that."
Of course, to best accumulate their young talent, the Braves had to commit to a rebuild, losing 95, 93, and 90 games from 2015-17, but the turnaround has come quicker than expected.
As of Monday, they had the best record in the National League, at 48-34, and Snitker admitted, "we're ahead of where we thought we'd be."
The young position players have gotten most of the attention, as well as Freddie Freeman, who might be the NL MVP of the first half, yet Snitker said the starting pitching is the biggest reason the Braves are a year ahead of their rebuilding schedule.
Indeed, the Braves' starting pitchers rank first in the NL with 3.31 ERA.
"It's better than we thought because of the emergence of some young guys," Snitker said.
He's referring mostly to 25-year-old left-hander Sean Newcomb and 26-year-old right-hander Mike Foltynewicz, and the Braves have more highly-touted starters in their early 20s close to being major league-ready.
In other words, they might be close to having a rotation akin to what the Mets rode to the World Series in 2015, except they also have the second-highest scoring offense in the NL at the moment.
They need bullpen help, to be sure, but by this point the Braves have to be taken seriously as a contender, especially in the National League where there appear to be no juggernauts.
Nevertheless, this three-game series in the Bronx figures to be a measuring stick of sorts, not only in matching up with the Yankees but having their poise tested in such an intimidating environment.
Snitker, as you'd expect, doesn't think his team will be affected by the surroundings.
"It's a young group that has a lot of confidence in their abilities," he said. "I've seen that through the whole year.
"They're not scared, they're going to go out and push the envelope and trust their ability."
Snitker, in fact, says these young Braves remind him of a team he saw way back in 1991, when he was a minor-league coach in the organization. After years of losing, those Braves went from 65 wins in 1990 to 94 in '91, and all the way to Game 7 of the World Series.
"I've seen it before," Snitker said. "I told the guys in spring training, I see a lot of similarities to that group in '91, with young players coming on fast. Nobody expected that team to do what it did either."
These Braves aren't quite there yet. But they sure appear to be on their way to an extended run of success. The kind the Mets were supposed to still be enjoying in 2018.
