Ike, Bay homer to back Gee as Mets beat Braves

ATLANTA -- Some may chalk it up to parity in the National League East. As for the Mets, this quick April start feels more like a party, and at the expense of their divisional foes, no less.

The joy ride continued Monday night as Ike Davis went deep for the second time in as many days, this time with a tiebreaking three-run homer off Tommy Hanson, and Dillon Gee supplied seven strong innings in a 6-1 victory over the Braves at Turner Field.

Even Jason Bay returned after missing Sunday's game with a jammed finger and did David Wright one better. Bay's home run -- a long drive over the centerfield wall -- came in the ninth inning, not his first at-bat. But he also made a spectacular catch to rob Jack Wilson of a homer in the fifth, reaching above the wall before crashing down to the warning track.

"There's a drill going on right now," Terry Collins said after the Mets improved to 4-0 against Atlanta this season. "They're sliding into a fake base. We got about four guys back there -- they'll keep sliding until they jam [a finger]."

But this is about more than lucky breaks -- fingers or otherwise -- for the Mets, who are off to their best start since they also began 7-3 in 2007. Take Davis, for example. He opened this season in an 0-for-18 skid, homered Sunday and then got some revenge against Hanson.

Davis had been 2-for-14 with six strikeouts against Hanson, and in that sixth-inning showdown, he already had been targeted as the weak link. With two outs, Hanson intentionally walked David Wright, and then threw Davis four straight curves: swing-and-miss, ball, ball, foul. When Hanson tried a fifth, Davis pulled it deep into the rightfield seats for a 4-1 lead and put other teams on notice: There is now a price to pay for not pitching to Wright.

"With the way I've swung the bat this season, it fires me up a little bit because I want them to stop," Davis said. "I want David to have a chance to hit instead of being walked every time in front of me and I needed to step up. It makes you concentrate a little more because you don't want this to happen to the guy in front of you."

The Mets swept Atlanta to start the season, but this meeting was supposed to be different with Chipper Jones back. But Gee was sharp, allowing four hits and one run over seven innings, striking out five. He retired 14 of 15 before Dan Uggla's leadoff single in the seventh.

In that inning, the Braves put the first two runners on, but Gee retired the next three batters, striking out two. "That's a big confidence builder," he said. "You get in a hole like that, a situation of that magnitude where it definitely could blow up in your face and you get out of it, it makes you feel good. It makes you feel like you can get out of big jams."

Bay helped out Gee with his amazing catch, which looked like a replay of the Sept. 16 catch he made to rob Alex Gonzalez at Turner Field last season. "Robbing homers isn't a huge part of my game," Bay said, "so it's just weird that two years in a row here -- same spot, same everything. Weird."