For a long time now, it has felt like the national baseball media has had a love-hate relationship with the Atlanta Braves. The Braves have a number of players that experts seem to love including Ronald Acuna Jr., Spencer Strider, Austin Riley, and Chris Sale, but it is hard to ignore how quickly national writers are willing to jump ship on the Braves in favor of the NY/LA markets (and sometimes Philly) as well as their inexplicable disrespect towards Ozzie Albies. One such writer has been The Athletic's Ken Rosenthal.
In terms of reporting breaking news, Rosenthal has been among the best in the business alongside ESPN's Jeff Passan for years now. However, he tends to get himself in trouble with some fanbases once he starts editorializing. For example, Rosenthal famously took the Braves (and others) to task for not having starters go deeper in the 2021 World Series while conveniently ignoring the fact that one reason for that was that Charlie Morton broke his freaking leg in the first inning of Game One.
Well, Rosenthal was at it again on Friday as he wrote an extensive piece for The Athletic where he talked about the ramifications of potentially cancelling Monday's doubleheader with the Mets. Discussing those consequences is fair, but Rosenthal took it a bit far as to declaring how "unfair" it is to other teams and seemingly placing blame on the Braves and Mets for it.
How the planned Mets-Braves doubleheader could negatively impact the entire NL wild-card field: https://t.co/6crPDT8Z5D
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) September 27, 2024
Rosenthal's logic in discussing "fairness" of potentially cancelling Braves' doubleheader is fundamentally flawed
Look, no one thinks that how Hurricane Helene has impacted the NL playoff race is ideal and that includes both the Braves and Mets. Everyone would have preferred that the schedule get played out normally so that Monday would be a travel day for whoever gets in. That MLB is even entertaining cancelling the doubleheader if it isn't needed to determine who makes the playoffs is a sign that the league wants to try to be fair to the team(s) that make it in as no one is at fault for summoning this weather to the Atlanta and shouldn't be punished unnecessarily.
Where Rosenthal goes off the rails is talking about how unfair it is that the Braves and/or Mets will have played 18 less innings in a 162 game season if the doubleheader is cancelled and how teams like the Brewers are already crying about it. By that logic, we would have to go and look at the WHOLE season and see which teams have had rain-shortened games and penalized them by not giving them off days in the postseason. Sorry to the potentially playoff-bound Royals, but you have pitched 23 less innings than the Yankees in 2024, so you have to wait to fly to your first playoff game until the night before and play the first inning without a centerfielder.
This notion of "universal" fairness that Rosenthal is trying to apply here is ridiculous. Sometimes you are the #1 seed in a playoff bracket and you end up going against the hottest at the time team in all of baseball coming out of the Wild Card round. It certainly isn't "fair" that the Braves have had to weather as many injuries as they have or how they have had to completely change their rotation strategy in the coming days with a potential season-defining doubleheader on Monday currently on the books.
This is just an unfortunate situation that is conveniently ignoring the fact that the city of Atlanta just got devastated by a hurricane that no one asked for and no one should be blamed for. For Rosenthal and all of the other teams that are worried that the Braves and/or Mets might actually have a day to travel to their playoff series, get over yourselves. One can't help but wonder if their tune might change if a storm had hit New York or Los Angeles instead.