On one side of the country Monday, the Atlanta Braves showered off the Champagne and beer after 18 innings of being crammed into the physical and emotional equivalent of a cement mixer.
On the other side of the country, one of the best and most rested teams in baseball with a canyon-deep pitching rotation configured for maximum sledgehammer impact awaited.
For one, a long airplane ride and scramble-of-a-travel-day to face the team with the game’s best record after the All-Star break in a decibel-shattering ballpark that recently sold out for the 121-loss White Sox.
For the other, the Padres, the opposite of everything the team that fought off the Mets in the second game of a doubleheader to salvage its playoff life faced. Advantage, Padres. Clearly. Obviously. Without question. In ways almost too numerous to list.
Then again, this is baseball. It can be the most fickle and unforgiving of sports, a logic-bending pretzel no matter how many feel-good dominoes line up.
“Wild day today,” said Padres pitcher Michael King, the team’s starter for Tuesday’s Wild Card Series opener at Petco Park. “… I know the Braves just went through a crazy day and we’re hoping to give them a little bit more craziness.”
The Padres only need to rewind to 2022 to reacquaint themselves with a gold-plated lesson they taught themselves.
They stared at the longest of odds in a wild-card series, traveling to face the 101-win Mets and dual aces Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom with all three games under the searing lights of neighboring New York.
They won anyway.
This time, though, the edge is exponentially bigger. Not only did the Braves play a day after the rest of baseball unlaced its cleats, they played with the pressure of a season on the line with no off day as a reward before the playoffs cranked the volume nob to 11.
“Playing a doubleheader (Monday) definitely doesn’t help them and benefits us in a way,” Padres third baseman Manny Machado said. “But at the end of the day, it’s postseason baseball. Once that game starts, once those lights turn on, both teams are going to be competing.”
“Do we have the edge today? Absolutely. But who knows (Tuesday)?”
This is rare if not uncharted water, what the Braves will face.
They drained the heart-and-brain gas tank in addition to the physical one, especially in the opener that pressed their shoulder blades against the wall. The 8-7 Mets win included 12 runs in the final two whiplash-inducing innings.
The tax bill included the use of nine pitchers, two of which warmed up and threw in both games.
Then, after the Braves survived the marathon, manager Brian Snitker said NL Cy Young winner in waiting Chris Sale is not expected to throw against the Padres because of back spasms.
The upper-hand meter hardly ticks higher.
A savvy veteran like Machado knows, however, that the universe between the lines can flash a sinister sense of humor. Forget the 93 regular-season victories. Forget the comebacks, the Dylan Cease no-hitter, the thrilling triple play against the Dodgers in Los Angeles.
Stars, especially baseball stars, align some magical nights but not others.
“We can’t let up,” Machado said.
The lunacy that led to Monday and the fates of four teams that came with it — the Braves, Padres, Mets and ousted Diamondbacks — required not only an NL chase that stayed whisker-close to the end.
It needed a hurricane, Helene, to delay a pair of critical games beyond the final Sunday. This was not a stunning baseball phenomenon alone, but a meteorological one as well.
“Just watching the game as a baseball fan,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said of the epic Monday. “Obviously some curiosity about how it impacts us. But you know, you just step aside and appreciate the theater.”
And what theater it became, as the Mets first played their way in and the clawing Braves soon did the same.
If you’re a Padres fan, you see the myriad advantages. If you’re a Braves fan, you see a team riding a wave. In the end, both might be right.
“I have no history with it,” Shildt said of the polar-opposite circumstances affecting both teams. “I don’t think many people do. I just know we’re ready to play.”
The day started with a trio of teams holding onto a pulse. The rush hour of scenarios was so frenetic, so late, that King was preparing for the top four hitters in each of those lineups this weekend.
Machado shook his head at the whole of it.
“October’s started for sure, huh?” he said.
On Tuesday, against the Braves in the din of Petco Park, the calendar will agree with him.