MLB’s decision to push up Thursday’s Mets-Phillies game by about an hour did little to erase the bigger problem hanging over Citizens Bank Park: the air itself.
By game time in Philadelphia, the skyline beyond the outfield wall was nearly swallowed by smoke from Canadian wildfires. The air quality was already being labeled “unhealthy” during pregame warmups and had only eased to “unhealthy for sensitive groups” by first pitch. Twenty-eight other clubs were off, but the Mets and Phillies were still sent out there to play through it.
Around 4 p.m., the league told both teams the start time would move to 6:10 p.m. A source familiar with the situation said MLB believed the air quality index could spike again after 10 p.m. and wanted the game in a better window. Mets interim manager Andy Green said the league, the city and the teams believed the conditions were acceptable.
“MLB, the city, [and the teams] feel it’s safe enough to play a baseball game,” said Mets interim manager Andy Green. “We certainly hope it stays that way…We limited our outside exposure to a very short time.”
Still, the late adjustment looked less like a real safety call than a compromise, and not a convincing one. MLB said the decision to postpone a game because of poor air quality sits with the commissioner’s office, working with the players’ association, the teams, medical experts and independent weather experts. Even so, the move drew plenty of side-eye.
The TV piece of this mattered, too. ESPN’s new agreement with MLB gave Thursday a stand-alone game to open the unofficial second half, and that setup helped create the odd scheduling wrinkle.
On paper, it was just a three-game series with a Friday off day. In practice, it meant both clubs were coming out of a shorter break than everyone else, and the earlier start cut into prep time even more.
“This is typically a day that you might have an elongated workout because guys are coming off a break,” Green said. “It’s an adjustment but baseball always tends to make us make them.”
That kind of inconvenience is one thing when a team is 17 games under .500. It’s another when players are being asked to exert themselves in visibly rough air while other options seem to exist. According to IQ Air, conditions were expected to improve by Friday’s off day, and Saturday storms might have delayed the next game anyway while also helping clear the air.
The larger frustration is how much of modern baseball is now tangled up with TV windows, blackout rules and streaming deals. Those issues already make the sport harder to follow. They also make situations like this feel even messier, because once smoke is in the sky, it’s fair to wonder whether a broadcast schedule is nudging the baseball schedule.
MLB said there is no automatic AQI number that forces a postponement.
“We have developed principles and best practices for addressing such incidents at both the Major and Minor league levels,” an MLB spokesman said in a text message. “There’s not an AQI [air quality index] that automatically triggers postponement.”
He added that the league weighs how long the poor air is expected to last, noting, “AQI can be fickle. If a high number may be reached but is not expected to be sustained, then that could be one factor that we can take into account.”
The league has postponed games before because of air quality, including minor- and major-league contests, and it even moved two Mariners home games to San Francisco in 2020. But in those cases, as in this one, players were left to trust that MLB was putting their health first.
Marcus Semien, a players’ association executive subcommittee member, said the move-up made sense, at least on paper.
“It looks pretty bad out there,” Semien said before the game. “[Moving it up] is for the better…I think that’s why they moved it up, to have us be playing during the best window and knowing it’s going to probably get worse later.”
At that point, he still had not been outside.
“I was out there [Wednesday] in New York,” he said. “You could smell it quite a bit…I know the team is trying to limit our time outside [today], but once it’s game time, it’s time to go.”
So Semien took his gear and headed into the haze. His teammates got only a limited infield workout and tried to keep the running to a minimum. Less than two hours later, the stands were full anyway, with fans showing up despite the air.
And for those who stayed home, ESPN had the game on. Subject to blackout restrictions, of course.
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