The collateral damage of the Great Rainout Debacle could extend to the Milwaukee Brewers and San Diego Padres, two teams that hardly deserve to be penalized.
If the New York Mets and Atlanta Braves are forced to play a doubleheader on Monday to decide one or both of the final National League postseason spots, that would force one or both clubs to play seven or eight games in a wild-card series. You will be seriously compromising. me.
Rain drenched Truist Park Wednesday, forcing the postponement of the final two games of the Mets-Braves series. (Kevin D. Lyles/Atlanta Braves/Getty Images)
But what if doubleheaders are only needed for seeding and Commissioner Rob Manfred uses his discretion to cancel them entirely? The Mets and Braves will play 160 games rather than the 162 required by all other clubs. This doesn’t seem fair to the Brewers and Padres. Both teams are on the verge of home field advantage in the best-of-three wild card round.
Sowing is not as important as some people think. If one or both NL East teams earn a wild card, it could have major implications for both travel and home-field advantage in subsequent rounds.
First of all, the flight time from Atlanta to Milwaukee is shorter than the flight time from Atlanta to San Diego. And remember when the fifth-seeded Padres met the sixth-seeded Philadelphia Phillies in the National League Championship Series two years ago? The Phillies won the series anyway, but seeding dictated home field advantage.
Manfred will have to consider the whole picture and strive for the fairest outcome. If the Mets and Braves play two fewer games, pitchers will pitch 18 fewer innings and hitters will pitch 18 fewer innings. fry? maybe. But one Brewers official, who was granted anonymity for the sake of candor, said: “That wouldn’t be fair. “We lost the last game and should not use a pitcher in the 162nd game,” he said.
Brewers general manager Matt Arnold was more diplomatic, saying, “We’re focused on controlling what we can control and not worrying about who we’re going to play or how they’re going to get there.”
Padres general manager AJ Preller did not respond to a request for comment.
Nothing has been decided. The circumstances were unique and perhaps unavoidable. like athletic‘s Britt Ghiroli wrote that the Mets and Braves acted out of self-interest in their scheduling choices. But neither club imagined they would find themselves in this position. And while Major League Baseball could have been more proactive in getting teams to play earlier in the week, it offered hope that the forecast could improve.
The Arizona Diamondbacks are likely to face more immediate consequences than the Brewers and Padres. If only one of the Mets or Braves clinch a wild card this weekend, that team could use mostly reserves and low-leverage pitchers in one or two games on Monday (possibly one depending on the outcome of the opener). race). If other teams were still competing with the Diamondbacks, they would have an easier path to the final spot.
The Mets, Braves and Diamondbacks just warrant a lot of sympathy. All three teams could have avoided this predicament if they had won more games. The same is true to some extent for the Brewers and Padres, who are stuck in the wild card round because they did not receive a first-round bye.
However, the Brewers and Padres played well enough to gain home-field advantage in the Wild Card Series. And that advantage will be mitigated if the Mets and Braves don’t play two games on Monday.
— Athletic‘s Jayson Stark contributed to this story.
(Top photo of Pete Alonso (left) and Matt Olson: David J. Griffin / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
