If the Mets already didn’t have enough to contend with heading down to Atlanta for a vital three-game series against the second-place Braves that could potentially decide the National League East, mother nature has entered the conversation.
Lingering effects from Hurricane Ian, which was set to make landfall this week, mean that rain will be in the area throughout the series, scheduled for Friday through Sunday.
And there isn’t much room for any potential rainouts to be made up. The Mets have an off day on Thursday that was meant to be used as a travel day to get down to Atlanta. Following the Braves series, they return home for a regular-season-finishing three against the Washington Nationals from Oct. 3-5.
The playoffs start just two days after on Oct. 7 — meaning the team that finishes second in the NL East will have to play in the best-of-three Wild Card.
“When they tell us to play, we play,” Mets manager Buck Showalter said. “They say three [games] on Thursday, line them up. Let’s go.
“I think there’s going to be some moving things. My concern… is making sure we position ourselves to go in as many directions as we can and not get tied up in this and all of a sudden something happens. We have to be careful of making too many plans but you do need to create some versatility in what we can do and not do.”
Showalter revealed that the Mets and Major League Baseball have had conversations about contingency plans about guaranteeing the playing of the entirety of the series — whether that’s using the travel day as an option to schedule a game or potentially moving it to a neutral sight with safer conditions.
However, any specifics are under “double-secret probation,” per Showalter.
The Mets have yet to commit to any combination of starting pitchers for the Braves series following their two-game set against the Miami Marlins on Tuesday and Wednesday, which belonged to Carlos Carrasco and Taijuan Walker. It will obviously be paramount to not only line up their big guns in Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom for must-win games in Atlanta but to also have them readily available for the beginning of either the Wild Card or NLDS.
“We also at some point need to tell pitchers as far as work days and all those other things,” Showalter said. “I guarantee you something will happen over the [next few nights] that will change the way we look at it. It’s happened every day.
“We know what’s going on but I really don’t want to put the focus on that because our guys have done a great job of staying on task.”
