The Twins and Guardians made multiple attempts to fit ballgames in between torrents of rain Monday night at Target Field. The result was a forgettable three and a half innings of baseball, with the Twins holding a 2-1 lead in a game that will be resumed (in theory) at 5:10 PM Tuesday night. After the two teams finish that contest (if, indeed, they do), they’ll play a late-night second game.
Except, here’s the thing: no, they won’t. It has rained almost nonstop since 7 PM Monday in the Twin Cities, and the forecasts all call for that to continue through Tuesday night. It does look as though the skies will finally have emptied themselves by Wednesday afternoon, when the two teams are scheduled for the final game of this three-game series. They won’t want to play a doubleheader then, though, because the Guardians have to be in Detroit for the start of a four-game weekender Thursday evening. At least one game will be washed out, here. They might try to complete the suspended one Tuesday, or just bump that to Wednesday and play a not-quite twin bill Wednesday. They might not even be able to do that; there could be 14 innings of baseball to make up when Cleveland’s plane takes off Wednesday evening.
The good news, of course, is that the Guardians come back to Minnesota—albeit just once, rather than the two other times a division rival would have visited under the old schedule format. These teams are scheduled to play at Target Field again on Sept. 19-21, and one of those dates now looks very likely to be a doubleheader. Alternatively (or additionally), they could make up a game on Sept. 22, when the teams have a mutual off day. The Cleveland series will be the last set of a nine-game Twins homestand, but before playing in Texas on the following Tuesday, Minnesota has a travel day scheduled. So do the Guardians, who will have a home series against Detroit right after playing the Twins.
Neither team wants to push off a makeup game that far, of course. If the weather is bad again in September (always a possibility), needing to fit four games into three days or giving up a travel day to fit in a contest could become truly miserable. It could become an utterly unmanageable mess. Looking at the radar, though, it’s hard to see that there will be any choice in the matter. There are 23 innings (or more) of baseball left to play in this series, and nowhere near room for them in the windows between showers.
Weather has poked the league in the eye quite a bit already this year. It looks like one of those years when the league will play a good 35 or 40 doubleheaders, and the Twins figure to be overrepresented in that sample. It’s frustrating, because it feels like Mother Nature is the only opponent the Twins can’t beat right now. On the other hand, as Byron Buxton and Carlos Correa sit on the shelf with concussions and Willi Castro hobbles around the field with a knee contusion causing him obvious discomfort, maybe this isn’t the worst time for some days on the calendar to be wiped blank.
There’s no way to make up these games that won’t mess with the Twins’ pitching schedules, but the Guardians will face an even more acute version of the same problem. As we wait to see whether the sky will clear at any juncture in the next 30 hours, both sides can merely gather and try to come up with ways to stay ready and minimize the impact of this inconvenience. For fans, it’s not so bad. An occasional rainout is a miniature blessing, even amid a hot stretch for the team. It’s extra time to think; to get something else done; to rest. The stress, for fans and for players, will come whenever the bill comes due for these lost games—when the schedule gets crowded and grueling late in a pennant race. The stress for executives and coaches comes right now.