Monday, Sept. 30, was supposed to be a bit of a buffer day for Major League Baseball. The final day of the regular season is Sunday with the starting playoffs Tuesday. Monday was for settling in after any travel and for setting up playoff rosters, specifically pitching plans.
Instead, the Mets and Braves will spend their day off battling through a doubleheader after their scheduled games on Wednesday and Thursday were postponed due to Hurricane Helene.
The weather caused this and that isn’t anyone’s fault. It’s tough to be overly proactive with weather, but the reactive part here is where Major League Baseball totally dropped the ball. As always, the buck stops with commissioner Rob Manfred.
Once it was evident how much the hurricane was going to affect the weather in the Atlanta area this week, MLB started racking up the errors.
First up, both the Mets and Braves had an off day on Monday this week. Knowing how bad Hurricane Helene was going to make playing conditions through the middle of the week, why didn’t MLB move to play one or two games on Monday? Truist Park was empty.
Worse yet, the Braves reportedly pushed back on moving the games (either location or time) for Wednesday and/or Thursday. Keep in mind, Major League Baseball is the boss here, so I don’t blame the Braves one iota. They had a gate to protect and were expecting large crowds. You don’t forgo that unless your hand is forced.
The problem here is that Manfred won’t force that hand. That would mean pushing back against owners — and we know that Manfred works for them. It was never more evident than during the 2020 COVID-19 shutdown and then again during the owner-driven lockout before the collective bargaining agreement was finally reached before the 2022 season. Remember, Manfred even released an official statement calling it a “defensive lockout.” He was basically the owner representative against the players.
Anyway, this current situation is a tough one, there’s no doubt about that. Again, MLB can’t control the weather. There would be complaints no matter what was done, too, which is always an unenviable position.
Control what you can control, though, right? Manfred could have better controlled the reaction to the impending weather crisis. This hurricane didn’t suddenly materialize. There were three options, it seems.
1. Get in front of the situation and schedule a doubleheader for Monday, Sept. 23. The risk there is the weather for Wednesday and Thursday doesn’t end up as bad as the weather reporting thought it would be. Is that really that huge a risk, though? This feels like it would’ve been the best option.
2. Move the scheduled Wednesday and Thursday games to a neutral site. The games could either be played on Wednesday and Thursday, one each, or they could be a doubleheader on one of the two days — whatever works best from a logistical standpoint. Globe Life Field in Arlington would have fit, as the Rangers are on the road this week. It isn’t rough travel from the Atlanta area at all and it hosted plenty of neutral playoff games in 2020. This would have worked out very well in terms of getting the games in. The only downside here would be complaining from the Braves side about getting two neutral games instead of home games, but this is a bad situation and bad stuff happens. A strong commissioner — after whiffing on the No. 1 option listed above — would have made this decision and then the response to any complaints would have been something along the lines “tough luck, deal with it.”
3. Schedule a doubleheader on Sept. 30. This was obviously the choice made. I also think there’s a “pray these games aren’t needed” component.
It really looks like they’ll be needed, of course. As things stand right now, the Mets and Diamondbacks are in a virtual tie for the last two playoff spots (the Mets hold the tiebreaker over Arizona) with the Braves only one game back. Each team only has three games before Monday. It’s difficult to run the possibilities and arrive at neither of these games needing to be played.
The Braves get to stay home to host the Royals, but they still might have to burn through a ton of pitching before the playoffs start on Tuesday. The Mets, meanwhile, are looking at possibly traveling from Atlanta to Milwaukee to Atlanta to San Diego in the span of six days, all the while throwing a wrench in their own pitching plans.
Keep in mind, there is a scenario where these games need to be played and a split would mean that both teams make the playoffs while the Diamondbacks miss.
These are professional athletes and no one should feel sorry for the players as human beings or anything, but this really messes with the integrity of the playoffs. A hurricane that gave everyone plenty of warning of its arrival has completely compromised one side of a playoff series the day before it starts — and the league let it happen.
In order to avoid this, all Manfred had to do was be proactive. Alas, that would’ve involved standing up to the ownership of a team. That isn’t really his thing.
