With Hurricane Helene bearing down on Atlanta, Major League Baseball finally made the tardy call to postpone the final two games of the New York Mets’ series down south against the Braves.
The two teams will make the games up in a doubleheader scheduled for Monday, which creates one final, grueling twist to the 2024 regular season.
The Mets will now have to find a way to escape from Atlanta to get to Milwaukee for what was supposed to be their final series of the season, a three-game set against the NL Central-champion Brewers scheduled for Friday through Sunday.
If playoff places and seedings are not clinched, the Mets must travel back to Atlanta to play the Monday doubleheader. Should they make the playoffs, they then have to get back out of Atlanta, where they would travel to either back to Milwaukee or San Diego to face the Padres — the current No. 1 seeded Wild Card team — for Game 1 of the best-of-three Wild Card Round which begins the very next day on Tuesday, Oct. 1.
The Mets currently lead the Braves by one game in the National League Wild Card standings after Atlanta took the first game of the series 5-1 on Tuesday night. Atlanta is currently on the outside of the postseason race looking in at the No. 2 Wild Card seed (fifth overall seed) Mets. The Arizona Diamondbacks possess a half-game lead for that final spot.
“If we’re playing a playoff game, that’s a good thing,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said. “I’m not going to get too far ahead, but right now, we have to concentrate on the next series… We have to take care of business over the weekend and then worry about the doubleheader when we get here.”
Such a difficult situation appears to have been exacerbated by the Braves, whose actions were further enabled by Major League Baseball. A report from Joel Sherman of the New York Post revealed that the Braves were unwilling to shift the start times, dates, or locations of the games this week to avoid giving up what was expected to be high gate receipts.
That is what appears to have prompted such a slow-moving decision. Mendoza revealed that he did not get a call from MLB until roughly 5 p.m. ET — just over two hours before the scheduled first pitch — despite steady, heavy rain falling in Atlanta throughout Wednesday. The area was expected to get approximately eight inches of rain over the next two days.
“My job is to manage the team,” Mendoza said. “We knew there was weather but you can’t predict it. We came here yesterday, lost a game, were ready to play today, and then we just got a call. Everybody knew what was coming.”
