It has been pouring rain all morning in Kansas City and it’s expected to continue through the afternoon and early evening.
However, according to the latest forecasts the chances that it will cancel Game 1 of the World Series between the Mets and the Royals are very remote and everyone believes it may get delayed an hour, but the game will be played in its entirety.
The weather.com hourly forecast now shows showers decreasing from 68 percent at 6:00 PM eastern time, to 35 percent at 8:00 PM when the game is scheduled to start, and then drops down to a 20 percent chance of rain by 9:00 PM. By 10:00 PM it diminishes completely.
So it looks like maybe we’ll get a short rain delay, but the game will go on as planned.
But for argument’s sake, let’s assume the game would get rained out and the two teams would play Game 1 on Wednesday, Game 2 on Thursday, and the series would continue Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Citi Field with no travel day off. Can someone explain the following quote from a prominent Mets Blogger?
“The rain helps the Royals, there is no way around it. If tonight is rained out, it will mean Games 1 through 4 are played four consecutive days, with a Game 5 coming on a fifth-straight day. The Mets bullpen is already a question mark. The lack of an off day will mean over-exposing it more than it already will be in a short series. A rainout also means the potential for a five-man rotation, because there is no off day to break it up.”
I have a few questions with this, chief among them – How would playing five straight games give the Royals an advantage over the Mets? Try as I can, I can’t make any sense out of that statement. It just doesn’t compute…
1. Why would the Royals bullpen be any more or less taxed than the Mets?
2. Isn’t the Mets bullpen more rested than the Royals who were still playing in the ALCS two days after we clinched?
3. Which four starters will likely pitch into the seventh inning, ours or theirs? The answer is a no-brainer if you look at average innings per start. We wipe the floor with them.
4. And if we did need a 5th starter who would you rather have the seasoned veteran Bartolo Colon or whatever the Royals end up throwing at us? Colon outpitched both Medlen or Duffy.
So I go back to this statement: “The rain helps the Royals, there is no way around it.”
Can someone please explain it to me?
