Rain delays in baseball are more complex now. Presumably, however many years ago, if it wasn’t raining at the scheduled game time, the game started. Then, if it started to rain at some point, there was a delay.
Now, since we have fancy things like weather forecasts and radar, teams are tempted to try to play the odds. If they see a line of showers approaching and nothing after, why not just delay the start preemptively to avoid a break in the game action? That’s fine, for the most part, and has probably served teams well. But as anyone who has ever depended on a weather forecast knows, it’s a dangerous game.
The Nationals found that out Thursday night, as they attempted to wait out a very slow line of storms approaching the D.C area, moving the start time back to 10:10 PM Eastern. Unfortunately for them, the rain they were monitoring amounted to nothing more than a few minutes of light showers, meaning they’d waited all that time for nothing.
People were not pleased:
This No-Rain delay is something i've never seen before!!
— Ender Inciarte (@enderinciartem) July 7, 2017
https://twitter.com/SInow/status/883347764163334144
Crowds were thin, considering most people had to leave rather than stay until what was guaranteed to be a post-midnight finish on a weeknight. Washington Post reporter Isabelle Khurshudyan showed up at 10 once she heard the game was delayed:
They let us sit anywhere for $5. pic.twitter.com/3sJixIoXAZ
— Isabelle Khurshudyan (@ikhurshudyan) July 7, 2017
And of course, fans who weren’t able to stay might be on the hook for the tickets. Without a rainout, there’s no rain check. That’s going to anger fans, especially families with kids who just couldn’t be out that late. It also hampered fans in multiple ways, including those taking public transportation; the last Metro announcement came during the third inning.
The Nationals tried to make it up, kind of, to those who stayed:
But it was followed by this. Free soda, water and ice cream! #Nats pic.twitter.com/wjoPZQvekh
— Aaron Oster (@TheAOster) July 7, 2017
The Nationals ended up losing to the Braves Thursday night, 5-2. On Friday, the team apologized for the situation:
A message from the Washington Nationals: pic.twitter.com/xsXOBvTDyJ
— Washington Nationals (@Nationals) July 7, 2017
That apology kind of shifts the blame to the elements still, and while you can understand a team wanting to be proactive in this area, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to apply that kind of guesswork. If there’s a line of storms minutes away? Sure, delay. But weather delay procedures aren’t really meant to be utilized in absence of any immediate weather threat.
We’ve seen it go wrong already this year. The Cubs already faced a bit of scrutiny for a similar decision earlier this year when they preemptively canceled a game on a day that ended up being fairly nice. But that at least avoided a situation where you had fans, media, and both teams already at the stadium. That’s the difference here, and it might be the tipping point for these preemptive delays.
We might not see one again any time soon.
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