MILWAUKEE — David Stearns isn’t pointing fingers at the logistical fiasco the Mets could face over the next few days.
In his first public comments since the final two games of the Mets-Braves series were postponed by Hurricane Helene, the Mets’ president of baseball operations said Friday he wasn’t sure if there would be a other viable option than for MLB to reschedule games for Monday.
If the games impact the NL wild card race, a doubleheader will be played in Atlanta.
If the games were to simply determine seeding, it would be up to commissioner Rob Manfred to decide whether they would be played.
The NL wild-card series is scheduled to begin Tuesday.
Stearns, before the Mets opened a three-game series against the Brewers at American Family Field, was asked if he was comfortable with how the situation was being handled by MLB.
“The truth is. I don’t know,” Stearns said. “I don’t know what the right thing would have been. Nobody wants to play a doubleheader on Monday. The Braves didn’t want this outcome, MLB didn’t want this outcome and we certainly didn’t want this outcome.
Among the possibilities was that the teams, knowing the weather forecast, could have played a doubleheader on Tuesday.
But the Braves insisted that the Series continue as planned, and MLB granted those wishes.
Moving Wednesday’s game to the afternoon was another option, but it’s unclear whether that would have helped: there was intermittent rain in the early afternoon before a steady downpour began around 2:30 p.m. and the match was ultimately postponed.
“I think it’s easy, in retrospect, to say we could have done things differently to get there,” Stearns said. “It is also difficult at the moment to predict exactly what the weather is going to do and there are many considerations that everyone thinks about to try to make the best decision possible. The reality is we may have to play a doubleheader on Monday. If we do, we will do our best.
“Those kinds of things happen and we can’t control the weather, we can’t really control when we play, and so we had two rains and here we are and I think everyone is really looking forward to playing.”
The Mets began the day tied with Arizona for the second NL wild card spot and one game ahead of Atlanta.
The Mets could close out a playoff berth before leaving town or need Monday’s games.
One possibility would be to play 18 innings on Monday, then go straight to San Diego for the wild-card series.
Or the Mets could return to Milwaukee. Or go home for the winter.
Stearns was asked when he started looking at the scoreboard.
“I was watching the scoreboard last weekend, for sure,” Stearns said. “But the truth is, if we win, we participate in it, so we still control our own destiny. As long as that’s the case, we focus more on what we do.
It only helps the Mets that the Brewers are already locked into the third seed for the playoffs, with nothing to gain from their final series of the regular season.
Would Stearns, given his knowledge of the Brewers from his time running their front office, prefer to face Milwaukee in the wild-card round?
“Our goal is to make the playoffs,” Stearns said. “If we make the playoffs, we’ll play everyone we need to.”
