Rob Manfred once again put the man in charge and left the doubleheader chaos between Mets and Braves to Hurricane Helene

Monday, September 30th was supposed to be a buffer day of sorts for Major League Baseball. The last game day of the regular season is Sunday, the playoffs begin on Tuesday. Monday was to settle in after the trip and establish playoff rosters, particularly pitching plans.

Instead, the Mets and Braves will spend their day off fighting their way through a doubleheader after their win Scheduled games on Wednesday and Thursday have been postponed due to Hurricane Helene.

The weather caused this and it's no one's fault. It's hard to be overly proactive about the weather, but the reactive part here is that Major League Baseball has completely dropped the ball. As always, responsibility lies with Commissioner Rob Manfred.

As it became clear how much the hurricane would impact the weather in the Atlanta area this week, MLB began piling up the errors.

First of all, both the Mets and Braves had an off day on Monday this week. Knowing how bad Hurricane Helene would make playing conditions by midweek, why didn't MLB move to play a game or two on Monday? Truist Park was empty.

Worse still, The Braves have reportedly pushed back to postpone the games (either location or time) to Wednesday and/or Thursday. Remember, Major League Baseball is the boss here, so I don't blame the Braves. They had a gate to protect and expected large crowds. You don't give up on this unless your hand is forced to do so.

The problem here is that Manfred won't force this hand. That would mean standing up to the owners – and we know that Manfred works for them. This was never more evident than during the COVID-19 shutdown in 2020 and again during the owner-induced lockout before a collective bargaining agreement was finally reached ahead of the 2022 season. Remember, Manfred even released an official statement calling it “defensive lockout“He was basically the owners’ representative to the players.

Whatever the case, the current situation is difficult, there is no doubt about it. Again, MLB cannot control the weather. There would also be complaints no matter what was done, which is always an unenviable situation.

Control what you can control, right? Manfred could have better controlled the response to the looming weather crisis. This hurricane did not come suddenly. Apparently there were three options.

1. Familiarize yourself with the situation and plan a doubleheader for Monday, September 23rd. There is a risk that the weather on Wednesday and Thursday will not be as bad as the weather reports had expected. But is it really such a big risk? There was also a logistical hurdle here, as the Mets were playing the game on Sunday night. Since the night game took place before the trip and then an attempt was made to schedule a game on Monday day, the players would have had to sign out by Sunday afternoon. At that point, MLB was certainly hoping that the weather wouldn't cause such turmoil.

2. Move the scheduled games on Wednesday and Thursday to a neutral location. The games could either be played on Wednesday and Thursday, or they could take place as a double-header on either day – whichever works best from a logistical perspective. Globe Life Field in Arlington would have been fine since the Rangers are on the road this week. Traveling from the Atlanta area is not difficult at all, and there were many neutral playoff games played there in 2020. That would have worked very well in terms of participation in the games. The only downside here would be that the Braves team would complain about getting two neutral games instead of home games, but that's a bad situation and bad things happen. A strong commissioner could have made that decision and then the response to any complaints would have been something like “Tough luck, deal with it.”

3. Schedule a doubleheader for September 30th. This was obviously the choice made. I also think there's a “pray these games aren't needed” component.

Of course, it really looks like they are needed. As things stand, the Mets and Diamondbacks are in a virtual tie for the final two playoff spots (the Mets are in the tiebreaker over Arizona), while the Braves are just one game behind. Each team only has three games until Monday. It's difficult to weigh the options and come to the conclusion that none of these games need to be played.

The Braves can stay home to host the Royals, but they may still have a lot of pitching to do before the playoffs begin on Tuesday. The Mets, meanwhile, are mulling potentially traveling from Atlanta to Milwaukee, Atlanta to San Diego in six days, all while upsetting their own pitching plans.

Keep in mind that there is a scenario where these games have to be played and a split would mean both teams make the playoffs while the Diamondbacks fail.

These are professional athletes and no one should feel sorry for the players as people or anything, but this really compromises the integrity of the playoffs. A hurricane that warned everyone it was coming completely jeopardized one side of a playoff series the day before it began — and the league let it happen.

To avoid this, Manfred just had to take the initiative. Unfortunately, that would have meant resisting a team's sense of ownership. That's not really his thing.