Major League Baseball and teams shifted the Red Sox-Cubs series schedule at Fenway Park, moving Sunday’s game to a Friday split doubleheader starting at 1:05 p.m. ET. The proactive change aims to dodge a major nor’easter expected to bring heavy rain, high winds, and potential flooding to Massachusetts.
Fenway Park Schedule Shifted for Impending Nor’easter
Weather concerns forced Major League Baseball to alter the final series of the regular season between the Chicago Cubs and the Boston Red Sox. Sunday’s originally scheduled matchup at Fenway Park moves up to Friday at 1:05 p.m. ET (12:05 p.m. CT) as the opening game of a split doubleheader. Friday’s originally scheduled contest moves to 6:05 p.m. ET, according to league reporting.
The Red Sox made the change in consultation with Major League Baseball and the Chicago Cubs due to the forecast of a major nor’easter expected to bring heavy rain, high winds, and potential flooding to the region during the weekend. The new start times are expected to provide the best opportunity to play the final series of the regular season this weekend. Tickets for the originally scheduled games will be good for admission at the newly scheduled times.
Desperate to finish the regular season, the Red Sox and Cubs will play a doubleheader Friday ahead of a possible nor’easter this weekend in Boston. If they can get those two games in, it would leave one additional game in the series. The thinking as of Wednesday afternoon was that their best chance would come Saturday. The Saturday game is scheduled for 7:15 p.m., but it can be moved up. Major League Baseball and the teams want to be proactive with these changes to avoid a potential scheduling nightmare — including, in a worst-case scenario, making up one or two games on Monday, the day between the end of the regular season and the start of the postseason.
Red Sox, Cubs, and MLB officials started meeting as early as Tuesday to discuss contingency plans. According to The Boston Globe’s Tim Healey, the Cubs and Red Sox are “planningto play a doubleheader Friday to avoid Saturday and Sunday's rainy conditions.
One possible alternative could be to have the Cubs and Red Sox play a doubleheader on Friday, which has a better weather outlook,MLB.com's Jordan Bastian and Ian Browne wrote Wednesday.
MLB would always prefer to complete the full 162 games on the schedule, especially with potential playoff seeding at stake.”
What I’m hearing is the weather doesn’t look good,
Red Sox manager Chad Tracy said Tuesday. “This first series [against the Guardians ending Thursday] looks good. And then you get to the Saturday-Sunday part and it looks like it could be not great. So I don’t know what the ultimate decision there will be. I just know it’s very much on everybody’s radar.”
Chad Tracy, Red Sox manager, via The Boston Globe
Red Sox manager Chad Tracy outlined the looming scheduling threat during team discussions early in the week. League officials and front offices coordinated proactive measures to bypass the worst of the incoming storm system.
Playoff Seeding Stakes for the Cubs and Red Sox
While the schedule change minimizes weather disruptions, postseason seeding adds high stakes to the weekend set. With the Cubs, Padres and Phillies heading into Wednesday with identical 87-70 records in the NL Wild Card standings, inclement weather could throw a wrench into the seeding situation. The Cubs can clinch a postseason berth as early as Wednesday night with a win over the Marlins at Wrigley Field or a loss by the D-backs at Colorado.
On the AL side, the Red Sox entered Wednesday holding the American League’s second Wild Card spot, trailing the Yankees by an insurmountable six games but holding a three-game lead over the third spot (currently the White Sox). While it’s likely the Red Sox will end up as the No. 5 seed, that is not locked in. The Rangers are on the outside looking in, three games back of the White Sox and six behind Boston.
The results of games likely won’t matter to the Red Sox, who have clinched a playoff spot and are all but locked into the No. 5 seed in the American League. Barring a highly improbable change in the standings, they are due to open the best-of-three AL Wild Card Series against the Yankees in New York on Tuesday.
For the Cubs, though, the final series is poised to be meaningful. They entered Wednesday in a three-way tie with the Padres and Phillies for the three wild-card spots in the National League. All three teams are highly likely to make it to the postseason. The final games will determine the seeding — including the top wild-card club, which will host the first round.
Contingency Plans and Historical Precedents for Weather Delays
When similar situations have happened in the past, Major League Baseball has worked with the clubs and MLB Players’ Association to proactively reschedule when feasible. In 2017, for example, a September series between the Rays and Yankees that was supposed to be played at Tropicana Field was preemptively moved to Citi Field as a precaution ahead of Hurricane Irma.
If this weekend’s Cubs-Red Sox series were not able to be played in full, the two clubs would make up any missed games on Monday (the day before the start of the Wild Card Series) if the outcome of those games mattered for postseason seeding. According to Bastian and Browne, the Cubs and Red Sox would make up any missed games on Monday if the outcome of those games mattered for postseason seeding.
Monday is the only off-day before the start of the Wild Card Series on both the AL and NL sides of the postseason bracket. Obviously, having to play on Monday is not something either side wants. Scheduling a doubleheader for Friday seems to be MLB’s best bet to get both games in before the severe weather makes its way through Massachusetts.
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