Scheduling is always a topic of interest at this time of the year, but there are some indications that unforeseen elements could impact the pennant race early next week.
The Atlanta Braves‘ final West Coast tour is almost over – and no matter how today’s game finishes, you’ve got to call it a success: wins in 5 of the 6 games thus far with 1 to play.
However, the home cooking coming up – the final home stand of the regular season – could get considerably soggy, which could throw a serious monkey wrench into the schedule.
First off, let’s check that schedule:
- Thursday, September 13 – Off Day
- FRI/SAT/SUN: Nationals at SunTrust Park
- MON/TUE/WED: Cardinals at SunTrust Park
- THR/FRI/SAT/SUN: Phillies at SunTrust Park
- Monday, September 24 – Off Day
- TUE/WED/THR: Mets at Citi Field
- FRI/SAT/SUN: Phillies at CBP – Last game September 30.
Let me also give you snippets from two other schedules: the Nationals and the Phillies:
It is the games from this coming Sunday-Tuesday that I am interested in for the purposes of this discussion, and for the background involved, I need to point to another website.
Joe’s Low-Down
Joe Bastardi is a Chief Forecaster for Weather BELL Analytics, LLC. This is a weather forecasting company that makes its living by providing industrial customers information about coming weather events that impact business interest.
Hurricane Florence would be one such event and Bastardi is a hurricane expert from way back. If you’d like to follow Joe on twitter, here’s that link… many of you in the North/South Carolina outposts of Braves Country may very well need that this week.
While most of their analysis exists behind a paywall – that’s how they make their living – Bastardi does publish free public video updates each morning. To find today’s update, click the link and scroll about 80% down the page.
Starting around 3:30 into the video, Joe posted a graphic to illustrate his reasoning about the path this dangerous storm is about to take in his view.
Schedule Disruption?
Note the “X” painted over Atlanta in the WeatherBell graphic for Monday (17th). At this point, Florence should be a tropical depression… but still with heavy winds and rain over a widespread area.
After that, Bastardi thinks Flo will proceed to the Potomac/Chesapeake Bay region before emerging into the Atlantic… perhaps around Wednesday (19th).
The Braves/Cardinals game on the 17th is thus at serious risk. But it might not be the only one.
It’s also quite plausible that the finale against the Nationals (slated to begin at 1:35pm) could be in jeopardy as well if this forecast verifies. A large storm centered over Savannah on Sunday isn’t going to have isolated effects: Atlanta is very likely to see squall lines of heavy rain that could begin… even on Friday or Saturday.
The field could thus see multiple inches of rainfall between then and maybe Tuesday, when the storm finally begins leaving the area. Getting games played over those days will take some extraordinary heroics by the Braves’ crack grounds crew.
Moreover, if the Cardinals and Braves are unable to play at least one of their games, a double header would have to be set up – perhaps for Wednesday. The teams have no mutual off-days remaining, and a Game 163 scenario would not be ideal… but neither would a DH.
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With things like Wild Card participation and home field considerations in play, the need for the Braves and Cardinals to complete their schedule is high, and Atlanta (in particular) would want to have everything complete as scheduled in order to get their rotation and bullpen setup for the post-season.
Then there’s the path Florence could take after leaving the Southeast. If either the Phillies or Nationals are still in a race, their own schedules could be partly scuttled, too. One doesn’t exactly have to go back in time very long to see that the grounds crews on both of those teams have been having some curious difficulties with weather.
Clearly, all of this is going to be fluid for the next solid week, and before that, there are some serious life-threatening issues that people on the North and South Carolina coastlines will have to be directly concerned with.
While the Braves will have to make the best of it, let’s all hope and pray that the worst we have to worry about with Florence is a baseball schedule.