Hurricane Helene: MLB postpones Mets-Braves games Wednesday and Thursday, will play doubleheader Monday

MLB is officially postponing two pivotal games between the New York Mets and Atlanta Braves, one day before Hurricane Helene is expected to make landfall.

The league announced Wednesday that it would postpone the two games and instead play a doubleheader on Monday, the day after the scheduled end of the regular season and one day before the wild-card round is supposed to begin.

The doubleheader is scheduled to begin at 1:10 p.m. ET in Atlanta, with the second game starting 40 minutes after the last out of the first game. Per Joel Sherman of the New York Post, the games will be played only if they have playoff implications.

Where Mets and Braves stand after Hurricane Helene postponement

As of Wednesday afternoon, the Mets hold the National League’s second wild-card spot with a record of 87-70, with the Arizona Diamondbacks a half-game behind them in the third spot. The Braves are currently the first team out of the playoff field, a half-game back from the D-backs and one game behind the Mets, with theoretically five more games to play.

The Braves’ defeated the Mets 5-1 in the first game of this week’s series. The delay of the other games might benefit the Mets on the field, as it gives MVP candidate Francisco Lindor a few extra days to get into shape for two games that could decide his team’s playoff fate.

Over the weekend, the Mets are scheduled to face the Milwaukee Brewers on the road, and the Braves are supposed to host the Kansas City Royals starting Friday. The fate of the latter games could be in question as well, given that the National Weather Service expects heavy rains to continue into Friday in Georgia.

MLB’s move is an eleventh-hour scramble to solve a problem that had been tracked for several days. Had the league and/or its teams moved earlier, they could have rescheduled the games to take advantage of both the Braves and the Mets being off on Monday. A doubleheader Tuesday could also have been feasible.

Instead, the two teams will have to finish their series on Sunday, stretch their bullpens across a doubleheader Monday (assuming the games still matter), then fly to potentially face the NL’s third or fourth seed, currently held by the Milwaukee Brewers and San Diego Padres, respectively..

Theoretically, the Mets could go from Milwaukee to Atlanta to San Diego in the span of 48 or so hours, playing four games in three time zones along the way.