2 weeks Ago
PHOENIX — Now the Padres wait. At some point, probably late Monday night, a plane carrying the Mets or Braves will arrive in San Diego. At some point, almost certainly late Tuesday afternoon, the Padres will begin their wild-card series against whichever team that is.
These things are generaly wrapped up by now. But an 11-2 Diamondbacks victory over the Padres on Sunday sent the Major League Baseball regular season into overtime and left the Padres in limbo. What is certain is that the Padres are in the playoffs.
They will be at home (or perhaps already at Petco Park) when they find out whether it is the Braves or Mets coming to town. As of Sunday afternoon, it did not seem likely the league would move Game 1 of the best-of-three series back a day to accommodate the Braves and Mets, who have to play a doubleheader in Atlanta on Monday. But the possibility had been discussed and could not be ruled out.
Game times are expected to be announced later Sunday. The Diamondbacks are not headed to San Diego. They might not be headed anywhere.
They may have only gotten a stay on Sunday by finishing with an 89-73 record while the Braves lost to the Royals and the Mets beat the Brewers to create a virtual three-way tie for the final two National League playoff spots. The Braves and Mets, who are both 88-72, had the final two games of their series last week postponed by rain. Those games are scheduled for Monday.
The Diamondbacks need one of those teams to win twice, because they lost the season series to both and would be eliminated if the Braves and Mets reach 89 wins. With at least a split Monday, the Braves will lock up the No.5 seed by virtue of having won the season series.
The No.5 seed plays the fourth-seeded Padres. The No.
6 seed will board a flight to Milwaukee to play the third-seeded Brewers. The Padres lost five of seven against the Mets and won four of seven against the Braves this season. They won seven of their 13 meetings with the Diamondbacks.
While the players on the field certainly tried to win Sunday’s game, there just weren’t a lot of the ones who would have been there if the result mattered to the Padres. Xander Bogaerts, Manny Machado and Jurickson Profar sat out Sunday, as the Padres rested their regulars for a second straight day after wrapping up homefield in the wild-card series on Friday. And a day after the Padres scored five runs in the ninth inning to beat the Diamondbacks 5-0, they were up 1-0 through three innings on Sunday.
The Diamondbacks dropped six runs on Martín Pérez in the fourth inning and added a run against Matt Waldron in the fifth..
