The season isn’t even half over, and the Braves already had eight rain delays, the most in the National League, including three in the four-game series against the Giants that ended Thursday at SunTrust Park, where the last two games of the series ended after midnight.
And there was a good chance of rain for Friday night’s home series opener against the Brewers at SunTrust Park.
“It’d be nice to start a game and finish it the day we started,” Braves manager Brian Snitker quipped before batting practice Friday. “I feel very fortunate that we got those four in (against the Giants), looking at the radar every day when we got here. It’s kind of a miracle that there weren’t more delays from that (tropical) storm.”
Seven of the Braves’ eight delays were in home games — all of those in the past seven weeks — and they sat through nearly 10 hours of rain delays in all through their first 72 games in a 162-game season before Friday.
Snitker, a grizzled baseball lifer who usually shrugs off any inconveniences that come with the summer game played (mostly) outdoors, admitted the delays have been a bit of a pain in the rear.
“Yeah, wears you out,” he said. “It wears you out mentally because it interrupts your whole routine. You get to bed later and you’re up, and the hanging around kind of gets to you. It’s what we do, you get through it, you play through it and go. But it does kind of wear you out a little bit.”