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A messy weather situation expected this weekend in New England could wreak havoc on the MLB playoff race.
Much of the Northeast, and the Boston area in particular, is projected to be hit with a nor’easter beginning late this week, bringing significant rainfall and high winds over the final weekend of the 2026 regular season. The Red Sox will complete their home schedule with a series against the Cubs scheduled for Sept. 25–27, but how and when those games get played is still an open question.
The Red Sox have already clinched their American League playoff spot, and are all but certain to have the No. 5 playoff seed and play the No. 4 Yankees next week in a three-game wild-card series at Yankee Stadium. The winner of that series would move on to play the top-seeded Rays in the AL Division Series.
The Cubs’ situation, conversely, is far less solidified. Chicago currently holds the top National League wild-card spot and the No. 4 NL playoff seed, and is in line to host a first-round playoff series next week at Wrigley Field. Chicago, however, could still finish the regular season anywhere from the No. 4 seed to No. 6, or possibly out of the postseason altogether. That makes every remaining game critical for the club.
Looking Ahead
As of now, there are no finalized contingency plans for the weekend games at Fenway Park, but MLB sources said the league will lean on its established structures to deal with unplayable weather. Game times could be moved, in consultation with the MLB Players Association, if updated weather forecasts reveal more favorable windows to play.
A more drastic solution would be to play the final game, or games, on Monday if the Cubs, and MLB broadly, still need those results for playoff seeding purposes.
A similar situation occurred in 2024, when the Mets and Braves required an extra day to complete their regular season due to impacts from Hurricane Helene in the Atlanta area. The two clubs played a doubleheader to make up two rain-delayed games, and each secured playoff spots during that twin bill, in turn eliminating the Diamondbacks.
The lack of an off-day before the start of the wild-card round was then seen as a factor in the Braves being quickly swept by the Padres. While the Mets went on a feel-good run to the National League Championship Series that year, the compressed schedule still generated plenty of criticism.
MLB has often sought to give itself more scheduling flexibility by having plenty of intradivision games in September, but the odd number of teams in each division, and each league, makes that impossible to do in full. And without a dome on every MLB stadium, some type of weather uncertainties are all but inevitable. MLB, meanwhile, has generally reserved moving games to neutral sites for the most drastic situations such as hurricanes or extreme snowfall.
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