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MILWAUKEE — David Stearns isn’t pointing any fingers for the logistical fiasco the Mets could be facing 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 on Friday said he is unsure there was any other viable option than for MLB to reschedule the games for Monday.
If the games have any bearing on the NL wild-card race, a doubleheader will be played in Atlanta.
If the games would just determine seeding, it’s up to commissioner Rob Manfred if 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 in the manner the situation was 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 Monday. The Braves didn’t want that outcome, MLB didn’t want that outcome and certainly we didn’t want that outcome.”
Among the possibilities was that the teams, knowing the weather forecast, could have played a doubleheader Tuesday.
But the Braves pushed to keep the series as scheduled and MLB complied with those wishes.
Moving Wednesday’s game to the afternoon was another option, but it’s unclear if that would have helped — there was intermittent rain early in the afternoon before a steady downpour began around 2:30 p.m. and the game was ultimately postponed.
“I think it’s easy in retrospect to say we could have done things differently to get there,” Stearns said. “It’s also tough in the moment to predict exactly what the weather is going to do and there are a whole lot of considerations that everyone is working through to try to make the best decision possible. The reality is we may have to play a doubleheader Monday. If we do, we will do the best we can.
“This stuff happens and we can’t control the weather, we can’t really control when we play, and so we got rained out twice and here we are and I think everyone is really looking forward to playing.”
The Mets began the day even with Arizona for the NL’s second wild-card spot and one game ahead of Atlanta.
The Mets could wrap up a postseason berth before leaving town or need Monday’s games.
One possibility would be playing 18 innings Monday and then heading directly to San Diego for the wild-card series.
Or the Mets could return to Milwaukee. Or head home for the winter.
Stearns was asked when he began scoreboard watching.
“I was scoreboard watching last weekend, that is for sure,” Stearns said. “But the truth of this is, if we win we are in it, so we still control our own destiny. As long as that is the case, we are most focused on what we are doing.”
It only helps the Mets that the Brewers are already locked into the No. 3 seed for the postseason, with nothing to gain from their final series of the regular season.
Would Stearns, given his knowledge of the Brewers from his time heading their front office, prefer to face Milwaukee in the wild-card round?
“Our focus is to get into the playoffs,” Stearns said. “If we get into the playoffs, we will play whoever we need to play.”
