Well, that was fun. At some point, Major League Baseball might want to do a deep dive into how it can avoid a repeat of Monday, when the New York Mets and Atlanta Braves split a gentleman’s agreement double-header to both advance to the playoffs — doing so in a game that was originally postponed from April 10.
Hurricanes happen and in the context of the loss of life and destruction left by Helene this is just this side of completely, totally, inconsequential. But … yeah … I’m not certain the original sin of delaying this thing from April 10 to Sept. 26 wasn’t flirting with fate. I get it: the Braves and Mets could have prevented this by playing better. And the Arizona Diamondbacks, who needed one team to sweep the doubleheader to back in, might have done better than going 13-13 in September and blowing an 8-0 lead to the Milwaukee Brewers on Sept. 22. But …
Most of the reporting on the matter suggests the Braves and Mets had their own reasons for this thing ending up the way it did. Truthfully? If the baseball gods had any sense of justice one of the two would have been sent home. At any rate, the guess here is the commissioner’s office will be a little more proactive with re-scheduling early-season rainouts — or swallow hard and play games in neutral sites in the event of weather
Still … damn, that sure was fun! Ozzie Albies of the Braves homering and clearing the bases with a double, Francisco Lindor winning it for the Mets with a homer … Grant Holmes bailing out the Braves after Chris Sale’s back spasms prevented him from starting Game 2 with the season on the line.
And then the news that Sale, the National League Cy Young favourite, won’t be on the Braves' roster for their NL wild-card series against the San Diego Padres.
The Mets' opponents in their best of three wild-card series will be the Milwaukee Brewers.
Funny, eh? One of the reasons MLB starts every game at the same time on the final day of the regular season is to remove as much as possible the chance that one team games the system. Yet on Monday, MLB found itself flirting with what could have been an optical nightmare.
As it was, the Diamondbacks took the high road. Deep down they likely knew whoever won the first game of the doubleheader would be resting players.
“Any team in that position is going to do the same thing right there,” Diamondbacks pitcher Merrill Kelly told MLB.com. “They’re looking forward to tomorrow. They know they’re in. They’re not going to play their main guys, and they know they’re not trying to get hurt.”
It was odd, to be sure. And the Diamondbacks' elimination meant that the two teams that played in last year’s World Series are both out of the post-season. It’s hard to repeat in this sport, man. It’s hard to even get a chance to repeat.
With Monday’s chaos behind us, here are our six to watch in the National League wild-card series.
• Ozzie Albies, 2B, Braves: Albies’ bases-clearing double gave the Braves a short-lived lead in Game 1 but it was the story behind it that tells you why Atlanta is still playing and while it will take a few more miracles to pull off a deep run. Albies, a switch-hitter who returned from the IL (fractured wrist) hitting right-handed only, drove a ball deep off the Mets' Edwin Diaz — righty on righty. He homered earlier in the game: doubling the number of extra-base hits he’d had over the preceding seven days. I mean … this is a Braves team that saw its Opening Day lineup lose 406 games to injury. And we haven’t even talked about Opening Day starter Spencer Strider. The Braves are once again without Ronald Acuna, Jr., as they were the last time they won the World Series …
• Luis Arraez, 1B, Padres: Oh c’mon already … take off your khakis, turn of your laptop and stick your WAR you-know-where. Yeah, Manny Machado and Jackson Merrill and Fernando Tatis, Jr., are the juice in the Padres lineup but … I don’t know. When I hear Jurickson Profar tell The Athletic that the Padres — a team that hasn’t been able to get out of its way for three years — were “transformed” when Arraez joined them in May … and when Padres pitcher Joe Musgrove says “it’s exhausting facing guys like that … so, although it might not provide the instant run that slug does, I feel like it’s extremely valuable,” it makes me feel like I’m stepping into a time machine. Arraez won his third consecutive batting title with his third different team and at one point went 141 plate appearances without a strikeout. He’s one of the reasons the Padres had the highest contact rate in the Majors. Maybe it makes sense that the team of Tony Gwynn would appreciate his talents more than any other.
• The Jacksons (Chourio, OF, Brewers; Merrill, OF, Padres): The story of the Brewers team is resilience. With Brandon Woodruff out for the season following shoulder surgery, Corbin Burnes gets traded. Devin Williams misses 104 games with a stress fracture in his back. Christian Yellich undergoes season-ending back surgery. Sal Frelick picks up a left hip injury in the final weekend of the season. Chourio has been a godsend in the first year of an eight-year contract that is an industry record for a player without MLB experience, appearing in 148 games and becoming the youngest player in MLB history to put up a 20/20 season.
The story of the Padres, meanwhile, is a team whose roster might be as deep as that of the Philadelphia Phillies without much in the way of weakness. Merrill, who like Chourio will be Rookie of the Year roadkill thanks to the Cult of Paul Skenes, is a 21-year-old star who has hit six go-ahead or game-tying homers in the eighth inning or later, tying him with Frank Robinson (1956) for the most in a season by a player 21 years of age or younger. He played in 156 games and, among centre-fielders, was second only to Aaron Judge in several statistical categories.
• Francisco Lindor, SS, Mets: I mean, you were watching those Monday games, right? Any surprise that it was Lindor’s homer that finally put that first game to bed and sent the Mets into the post-season? I know you could dig into things such as the Mets having the second-best starting rotation ERA in the National League since June 3 and mashing (hitting the fourth-most HRs in the NL) but there are times where I’m more of a “cometh the hour, cometh the man,” kind of guy and in 2024, nobody in the NL other than You Know Who has done that in the manner of Lindor, who finished with a 137 OPS+ and had 91 runs batted in with 33 homers. Against the Brewers' righty relievers, Lindor will give the righty-heavy Mets lineup a rare platoon advantage. New York? Shortstop? Post-season? Been a pretty good combination in the past …
• Tanner Scott, RP, Padres: On the surface, Scott and Adrian Morejon give manager Mike Shildt two high-leverage lefties to bolster the sometimes wobbly Roberto Suarez and Jeremiah Estrada. Since joining the Padres in a trade with the Miami Marlins, Scott has made the most appearances in the Majors (28) with 10 holds and is 4-for-4 in save opportunities. Two of the eight earned runs allowed with the Padres came in his last outing against the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Padres are 25-3 in games in which he’s pitched. We’re using him as an entry point into the entire Padres bullpen, which includes another deadline add in Jason Adam. Yu Darvish will be moved into the relief corps for the post-season, too. The Padres have the best rotation and bullpen heading into the post-season. Nobody has as much freedom as Shildt to lengthen or shorten a game.
JEFF BLAIR’S PREDICTIONS
• Padres defeat Braves, 2-0
• Brewers defeat Mets, 2-1
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