3 toughest series for the Mets during the month of June

At 30-27, the New York Mets now are tasked with a brutal gauntlet of a schedule for the rest of June, with the eight series that take place over the next four weeks all against strong competition.

The Mets have games against the Blue Jays, Braves, Pirates, Yankees, Cardinals, Astros, Phillies, and Brewers in this span (in that order), and all of these teams are playoff contenders (Yes, including the Pirates, who enter today's action just 1/2 game out of first place in the NL Central behind the Brewers).

So which tasks are harder than the others, you might ask? Well, let's pick three of them to watch out for the most, in chronological order.

1. The New York Mets visit Truist Park in Atlanta from June 6-8 for the first time since a disastrous weekend last October.

With the balanced schedule across baseball and with the amount of division games sliced from 19 to 13, these Mets-Braves tilts will be that much more important and tougher for the Mets which can go either way. And this is the first visit to Atlanta for the Mets since they got swept out of the NL East division crown last year.

Entering today's action, the Braves are the team with the best run differential in the NL (+58) and have a whole sortment of world class players to handle, from MVP candidates Ronald Acuna, Jr. and Sean Murphy to Matt Olson and Austin Riley, both of whom killed the Mets last year.

The one thing that could go the Mets way is the piching matchups. The Mets may miss Spencer Strider's turn in the rotation, as he pitches for the Braves on Saturday in Arizona and have an off day on Monday. And barring a change of plans, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander will both pitch in this series given their turns in the rotations.