The Braves and Mets Will Likely Have To Play a Doubleheader on Monday To Determine Who Will Get the NL's Final Wild Card Spots Before Starting the Postseason on the Road on Tuesday
If you want to see a clusterfuck, boy, do I have the situation for you.
The Atlanta Braves and New York Mets are currently battling the Arizona Diamondbacks for the final two Wild Card spots in the National League, with the former teams originally scheduled to play two more games against each other tonight and tomorrow. The forecast for those games has looked very bad for the better part of a week now, though, due to Hurricane Helene heading for the southeast. And now they officially won't be played until a potential Monday doubleheader the day before the Postseason is set to begin.
Both teams had an off day on Monday that could have been used for one of the games and the other could have probably been played early today, getting the series in with no issues. Instead, the Mets will leave Atlanta for a weekend series in Milwaukee before likely coming back to play two games on Monday and then potentially heading back to Milwaukee or to the West Coast to start the playoffs on Tuesday. There is an extremely unlikely scenario where the Diamondbacks could eliminate themselves before Monday and the games won't have to be played if they're only for seeding purposes, but I wouldn't count on that happening.
I would understand the Braves trying to exercise a little bit of gamesmanship in most scenarios, but this fucks them just as much as it fucks the Mets. Atlanta now won't have Chris Sale and Max Fried pitching against New York and if it finds a way into the Postseason, would have played five games in four days prior to traveling overnight to open the Wild Card Series. This is a nightmare for everyone involved.
As much as I wanted this dogshit Braves team to find a way to end the Mets' season in Atlanta yet again, we all need to root for Arizona to shit the bed this weekend and not make either team play this doubleheader that could have easily been avoided. Everyone clap it up for Major League Baseball.