Depleted Phillies pitching gets a gift from the heavens with World Series rainout

There was nothing anybody could do. Dusty Baker knew it. Rob Thomson knew it. Major League Baseball knew it. In the immortal words of Andre 3000: You can plan a pretty picnic but you can’t predict the weather.

Thing is, the picnic just got a whole lot prettier for one of these teams. As obvious as the decision was to postpone Game 3 of the World Series because of rain, the implications were even clearer for a Phillies pitching staff that has been increasingly running on fumes. On a night when they were set to send Thor out to the mound, they instead got a gift from the heavens. A big one.

» READ MORE: Phillies, Astros rained out Monday; Game 3 set for Tuesday and Game 5 pushed to Thursday

Thank the radar. Thank the forecasters. Thank the wonders of warm fronts and cold fronts and low pressure systems. Thanks to some combination of those meteorological factors, the Phillies will no longer be starting their No. 4 starter in Game 3 of the World Series. They will no longer have to wait until Game 5 to get one of their aces back on the mound. They will no longer have to hope that the second of those aces can shake his fatigue in four days. They will no longer have to exhaust their bullpen in the first of three straight games.

Will any of it matter? Who knows? But they’ll take it. Even before Thomson and Phillies president Dave Dombrowski got the final word from Major League Baseball that Game 3 would be moved to Tuesday, they’d discussed the changes that such a postponement would allow them to make.

Rather than starting Noah Syndergaard, who had not pitched for nine days and had thrown just 35 pitches in his lone postseason start, the Phillies would hand the ball to Ranger Suárez, who has already thrown 86 and 68 pitches in a pair of playoff starts and come out of the bullpen twice in the last 10 days. Not only would the move allow them to potentially get more length out of their starter in Game 3, it would line up Suárez to be on normal rest for Game 7, should a start be necessary.

Equally as big was the opportunity to move Aaron Nola from Game 5 to Game 4. While the veteran right-hander has struggled in his last two starts, he is the kind of starter who can win a game on his own. And he will now be available for a potential Game 7 on three days’ rest instead of two. Nothing will be easy against an Astros lineup that has swung the bat extremely well in the first two games of this best-of-seven World Series. But the Phillies are in better position now than they were.

The aftermath of Monday’s rainout did bring some concerning news. Rather than starting Zack Wheeler on normal rest in Game 5, the Phillies will give him an extra day to try to shake the fatigue that sapped his velocity in the Phillies’ 5-1 loss in Game 2. Wheeler remain penciled in for Game 6, with Syndergaard getting the ball in Game 5. It’s hardly an ideal situation that the Phillies are showing this level of concern for a pitcher who had been nothing short of dominant heading into the World Series. But, then, that would have been the situation with or without a rainy Halloween. Now, at least, he’ll have one more day to try to summon one last start.

» READ MORE: Astros won’t move up Justin Verlander the way the Phillies did with Aaron Nola

“It’s late in the season, his velocity’s dropped a little bit, he’s fatigued,” Thomson said. “I just feel like he needs more time.”

There’s another bonus, too. With Syndergaard starting Game 5, the Phillies will now be able to manage that bullpen-intensive game with the knowledge that they have the following day off. The decision by MLB to keep a travel day between Games 5 and 6 was the big wild card that broke in the Phillies’ favor.

After the postponement, the Astros could only shrug. The last thing they need right now are extra days off. By the time Game 3 begins on Tuesday, they will have played only nine games in 26 days. They sat out the wild-card round, then swept the division series in three games, then swept the American League Championship series in four games. The Phillies, conversely, have played 13 games during that stretch. Dating back to the regular season, they have played 23 games in 35 days, with 18 of those games on the road.

“I don’t think we need rest really right now,” said Baker, the Astros’ veteran manager. “We’ve had plenty of rest. We’ve had a lot of off days this last month. It’s just a temporary postponement, so we’ll take it as that and come out ready to play [Tuesday].”

The weather left Major League Baseball with no choice but to postpone the game. It left both managers with no choice but to accept it. But it left one of those managers with a big opportunity. Now, the Phillies need to capitalize.