Bad weather causes late travel for Braves, shift in pitching rotation
NEW YORK — The start of this road trip has not gone well for the Braves.
After losing the first two games to the White Sox in Chicago, and with one of those losses including an injury to star right fielder Ronald Acuña Jr., Thursday’s series finale was rained out. That was just the start of the team’s troubles that day.
Because of severe weather in the Chicago area, the team’s original charter plane, scheduled to arrive Thursday, had to be rerouted to a different city. The Braves had to wait on another charter plane to get to the city before they could fly to New York to begin a three-game series against the Mets at Citi Field.
By the time the Braves were touching down in New York City, the sun was rising on the Big Apple, and the team arrived at their hotel just before 6 a.m. Friday.
“You know it’s weird, it’s usually, for whatever reason — obviously this is very anecdotal, I don’t have any data on this — but seems like that second day is worse,” Braves manager Walt Weiss said about the possibility of the travel issues affected the team’s play Friday.
The delayed arrival in New York also made Weiss and the Braves shuffle their pitching rotation for the weekend. Spencer Strider was scheduled to start Friday, followed by Martín Pérez taking the ball Saturday and Bryce Elder pitching Sunday’s finale.
Pérez had been scheduled to pitch Thursday in Chicago, and Elder was on the docket for Saturday, followed by Grant Holmes on Sunday. Instead, Pérez will end up getting a couple extra days of rest before pitching.
“We were just going to push everyone back and have Pérez start (Friday), Strider (Saturday),” Weiss explained. “But you probably heard about our night of travel. So once we couldn’t get out of Chicago for a long time — and Strider was already here. We flew him ahead. We just switched it back.
“We didn’t want Pérez to pitch on a night where he got into the hotel at six in the morning. Strider was well-rested and already here.”
Even though the Braves were finally able to get to New York, the wet weather wasn’t as easy to shake. Friday’s game between the Mets and Braves was delayed because of rain.