Thanks to the doubleheader today between the Mets and Braves to decide the last two Wild Card slots, I don’t have a lot of turn-around time between the end of the season and the start of the postseason, so apologies if parts of this get a little hasty or could have used some more editing. I tried to pre-write parts of it, but some bits still had to wait until I knew the results, plus I had some other things to get done on Monday, and it all made this a little more rushed than usual.
Thankfully, I could pre-write this intro! So I’ll just take the time to say that their plan to move the two Braves games to the off-day between the regular season and the postseason was really dumb. I’m sure whichever team goes to the postseason (possibly both, if they split the series) will be thrilled with having to go all-out, losing an off-day, and traveling back-to-back-to-back like this. And if the Diamondbacks make it, even though they at least got to keep their off-day free, I’m sure they won’t be thrilled with having to wait so long and cut it so close to find out if they’re playing in October, let alone who their match-up will be against.
And this was such an obvious conflict. It was clear that the games would be disrupted due to weather, and rather than preemptively rescheduling them or moving them to a neutral site, my understanding is that Commissioner Manfred caved to the Braves management over concerns about missing out on ticket sales from the home games, letting them put off searching for alternatives until it was far too late to do anything.
Maybe it’s just my familiarity with the Astros, but I remember a time when the league would have stepped in and said “I’m sorry, but we need to move these to keep everything running smoothly”. In fact, I remember multiple times that happened! And neither of those scenarios were as pressing as these Mets-Braves games (both times came earlier in the season and had less bearing on postseason outcomes). And sure, I wasn’t happy about either of those at the moment, but I at least understood why they happened, and this present mess is offering a clear example of why the league needed to do something about the problem.
The big difference between then and now is, of course, the league’s commissioner. Bud Selig was greedy and rarely stood in the owners’ way, but he did seem interested in keeping the league functioning properly and improving the product on the field, even if that did occasionally lead to him overruling the owners. In contrast, Rob Manfred doesn’t seem to have that “but”; he’ll just let the owners keep pursuing whatever harebrained schemes they think will make them money now, even if it hurts them or the game in the long-run. Perhaps there are other scenarios where this pattern reappears.
Anyway, let’s move on to when future-me has the results of those last two games…
DROUGHTS
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