Laura Albanese: MLB chose ratings over safety by playing Mets-Phillies game
Citizens Bank Park has a hazy look due to the smoke of the Canadian wildfires on Thursday during a game between the Mets and Phillies in Philadelphia, Pa. Credit: Getty Images/Mitchell Leff
PHILADELPHIA
Twenty-eight other MLB teams sat idle Thursday, but here were the Mets and Phillies, playing in a haze that almost completely obscured the Philadelphia skyline beyond the outfield wall at Citizens Bank Park.
The poor air quality — categorized as “unhealthy” as the teams warmed up before the game and “unhealthy for sensitive groups” by the time the Mets’ 4-1 victory began — was the result of Canadian wildfires that have carpeted the Northeast under a blanket of smoke so thick it stuck to the back of your throat.
At about 4 p.m., MLB informed both teams that the game would be moved up by about an hour to 6:10 p.m. And a source with knowledge of the situation explained that the league believed the air quality index was at risk of spiking again after 10 p.m. and hoped to play in a more favorable window.
“MLB, the city [and the teams] feel it’s safe enough to play a baseball game,” Mets interim manager Andy Green said. “We certainly hope it stays that way . . . We limited our outside exposure to a very short time.”
But this 11th-hour call to move up the game was a feint at protecting the players and their fans — a half measure, and a mighty bad look.
An MLB spokesman explained Thursday that the decision to cancel a game because of poor air quality rests with the commissioner’s office, in consultation with the Players Association, the involved teams, medical experts and independent weather experts. But that didn’t stop more than a few eyebrows from being raised.
When ESPN negotiated its new agreement with MLB, it included Thursday’s oddity: A stand-alone game on TV to kick off the unofficial second half of the season and corner viewership for a day.
At first glance, the arrangement looks like a scheduling quirk — a three-game series with an off day Friday. But what it really meant is that both teams had a shorter break than everyone else. And with the moved-up start time, they also had less time to prepare.
“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.”
The adjustments continued throughout. While various Mets said they were fine postgame, all noted that conditions deteriorated to the point of discomfort.
“I didn’t think it was that bad until the last couple of innings — just eyes itching, burning a little bit,” said Brett Baty, who homered. “[Carson] Benge said it felt like you were sitting at a campfire . . . It didn’t feel great playing ball.”
Added Christian Scott, who pitched 5 2⁄3 scoreless innings: “Towards the end of it, the air was a little thick. I felt like I was breathing some metal out there, but at the end of the day, a spoonful of adversity didn’t hurt anybody.”
And Francisco Alvarez, who homered twice, said that by the end, “it was a little bit more difficult catching. It became a little bit more difficult to see.”
These are athletes and it’s their job to grind, but it’s irresponsible to expose your players to hazardous conditions and low visibility when other options are available.
According to IQ Air, the air quality is supposed to improve considerably by that Friday off day, and while predicted storms Saturday might postpone that second game, they also should go a long way toward clearing up conditions.
There are plenty of reasons to grumble about the way we consume baseball these days. TV blackouts and endless streaming services have made it more challenging to be a baseball fan. (Oh, were you looking for the Home Run Derby on Monday? I hope you have Netflix.) But it also muddies the waters when it influences scheduling by shortening the All-Star break and drums up controversy when you’re forced to wonder if a TV contract tips the scales when smoke fills the sky.
It probably doesn’t help that the criteria for postponement are fluid.
“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 they consider how long the high AQI is expected to last, as “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.”
MLB has, in fact, postponed a number of minor and major-league games because of high AQI and even moved two Mariners home games to San Francisco in 2020. In those instances, and in this one, players just had to trust that MLB had their best interests at heart.
“It looks pretty bad out there,” Marcus Semien, a Players Association executive subcommittee member, 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, Semien hadn’t been on the field yet.
“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 grabbed his stuff and walked into the haze, where his teammates took limited infield practice and tried not to run too much.
Less than two hours later, fans packed the stands despite the acrid air, loyal to the last.
But hey, at least fans who chose to stay inside had the option to watch the game unfold on ESPN.
Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.
