MLB bungles Mets/Braves series with hurricane looming

The Mets and Braves will play a double header on Monday after both games were postponed due to weather. Plus, thoughts on MLB's lack of decision-making.

What’s Up with the Mets? 🌧️

• The Mets and Braves were rained out last night due to Hurricane Helene, and will not play tonight either due to the weather

• The final two games of this series will be played as part of a straight double header at 1:10pm on Monday, the day after the regular season comes to a close

• There is a possibility that the games could not be played on Monday, but only if the Mets and Braves have already each clinched and/or been officially eliminated

• MLB could have overridden the Braves decision to try and keep the games played in Atlanta or at their regularly scheduled times, but chose not to (NY Post)

• Prior to last night’s game being rained out, SS Francisco Lindor was in the lineup batting leadoff and set to play shortstop after missing his previous eight games due to a back issue

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Playoff Race 🏁

The Mets and Braves did not play last night due to weather, while the Dbacks won and the Padres lost on Thursday night.

The Mets are a game ahead of the Braves for the 3rd Wild Card spot, tied with the Dbacks for the 2nd Wild Card – although they have the tiebreaker – and 3.5 games behind the Padres for the 1st Wild Card.

The Mets magic number is 4 vs the Dbacks and 5 vs the Braves with five games remaining.

Per FanGraphs, the Mets have a 70.2% chance of making the postseason.

The earliest the Mets can clinch a playoff berth is with a win on Saturday, September 28th.

Tiebreakers:

• vs. ATL: 5-6

• vs. ARI: 4-3 (finished)

• vs. SD: 5-2 (finished)

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Today’s Game 🗓

The Mets will not play until Friday due to two straight rainouts. They will resume action on Friday at 8:10pm in Milwaukee.

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MLB bungled a foreseeable situation and screwed the Mets (and Braves) in the process ✍️

What an absolute farce.

As if Mets fans didn’t have enough agita and frustration coming out of their series opening loss in Atlanta, that nearly pales in comparison after a mess of a situation that developed over the last few days.

Despite knowing for some time now that a hurricane was set to slam into the Atlanta area on Wednesday and Thursday, the Braves made the stellar decision to not make any efforts to adjust this series against the Mets. These teams could have talked about starting the series early on Monday since they were both off (they didn’t), they could have played a double header on Tuesday (they didn’t), they could have tried to play Wednesday’s game at 1:00 instead of at night (they didn’t), or they could have made the wisest decision and played at a neutral site. Guess what? They didn’t do that, either.

In fact, the thought of making this a neutral site series apparently wasn’t even a consideration according to the Braves manager.

“That all sounds good, but I think probably putting all that together is a little more involved than what we even think,” Brian Snitker told reporters on Wednesday. “I never heard that.”

As reported by the New York Post’s Joel Sherman, the Braves organization chose not to act for the most expected reason you can think of: money.

“Background conversations with involved personnel indicated that basically the Braves were expecting large attendance for the three games (it was 40,103 at Truist Park for Tuesday’s series opener, won, 5-1, by Atlanta) and did not want to forego the gates nor work through the logistics of moving personnel such as security, concessionaires, etc. to other dates or start times.”

Courtesy: NY Post

While you’re free to ridicule and point your fingers at the Braves here, and I do think that’s fair game, I’m also not going to pretend that corporate greed and trying to eek out an advantage in any way possible surprises me. But who is far more at fault here is Rob Manfred and the rest of the decision-makers at Major League Baseball.

While the home team gets to make the initial decision on weather situations during the regular season, MLB maintains the right to step in when the time calls for it and reschedule or relocate games as needed. The fact that the league knew this weather was coming, knew the monumental playoff implications of this series for not one but three different franchises in the Mets, Braves and Diamondbacks, and still sat back and did absolutely nothing is an absolute joke. The let these two teams spend the day pretending that they were going to play a baseball game last night when everyone knew there was next to zero chance of this happening, and it wasn’t until after 5pm when no other contingency plan could have been made that they chose to call the final two games of the series.

The saddest thing of all is that this nonsense is entirely expected from the Manfred era of this league.

Unless things get wrapped up for the Mets, Braves and Diamondbacks over the weekend — which is possible but not super likely — the Mets season is going to come down to a same-day double header in the house of horrors that is Atlanta, and they won’t even be able to get set their rotation to use their top options with the way this week has played out. The same goes for Atlanta, of course, but considering that they are as culpable as anyone in this jackassery (and we’re not writing Just Braves here), to hell with them.

If there’s any remote bright side for the Mets here, it’s that they will likely avoid both Chris Sale and Max Fried as you would assume Atlanta would pitch both of them this weekend against the Royals now. On the flip side, however, the Mets also likely won’t have Sean Manaea and David Peterson available in this series, and may have to turn to the likes of José Quintana and either Luis Severino (who struggled on Tuesday) or Tylor Megill.

If the Mets can accomplish the unlikely feat of sweeping the Brewers on the road this weekend with either the Braves losing two of three or the Dbacks continuing to collapse, they could render Monday’s double header as largely meaningless for themselves, if it even needs to be played at all. If not, though, this could set up for one of the biggest do-or-die regular season moments in the history of this franchise.

If they do what they need to do, it would be the culmination of all their hard work this season and a celebration of pretty epic proportions. If Monday goes how so many other September games in Atlanta have gone over all these years, however, it could also be one of the most detrimental, disheartening and devastating days that Mets fans have experienced.

The most mind numbing part of it is that it didn’t have to play out this way. There are so many different things that the Braves or the league could have explored to avoid this situation, rather than forcing themselves into a corner and potentially having one or multiple playoff spots decided in a double header – which has such a massively different effect on how these games are managed and executed than if they were spread out – that takes place after every other team’s regular season has already concluded.

It’s also worth mentioning that as of now, the Mets and/or Braves would currently be scheduled to start a postseason series (if either or both of them get in) the very next day. It’s possible that MLB could move things around here due to this double header, and they certainly should, but their track record of bungling this foreseeable situations does not exactly inspire any confidence that Manfred and his cronies will actually do the right thing for once.

This would further impact either or both of these teams, who not only would be playing their sixth game in five days, but also would have an absolute mess on their hands when it comes to setting up their rotations for a best-of-three playoff series that they’d likely be playing on the road.

A hurricane of horse shit that was entirely avoidable, yet absurdly handled. That’s Major League Baseball for you, and now these teams are paying the consequences for it.

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Around the League 🚩

• Dbacks RHP Zac Gallen struck out 11 batters over six innings as Arizona halted their three-game skid with an 8-2 win vs the Giants

• Dodgers DH Shohei Ohtani continued his stellar season with two more RBI as LA ended the Padres five-game winning streak with a 4-3 victory

• The Orioles offense started their game with six consecutive hits as Baltimore prevented the Yankees from clinching the AL East for the second straight night

• Tied for the most losses in a single season in modern history (120), the White Sox won for the second consecutive night thanks to a walk-off single by Andrew Benintendi