I don’t like it either, but it seems in this use case, it’s working as intended. Now all the folks who bought expensive opening day tickets can just use them Friday rather than getting into confusion with the people who bought tickets to Game 2 (which in Cincinnati I’m sure are cheap these days).
The problem is I am scheduled to come back Friday morning and am wondering if I should just bag the whole trip.
There's a lot of good beer in Cincy and it's an easy flight; in your shoes, I'd probably still go, with the expectation that I might not be able to see any baseball and might end up trading my tickets away in a bar somewhere (because the stubhub market is going to be dirt cheap if they do push the game to Friday).
Rhinegeist is a huge space and fun crowd but no AC, however, a rainy march day might be the perfect time to go there since AC doesn't matter then; MadTree is always a good choice, as is Taft's and Bad Tom Smith.
That said... if my hotel were not pre-paid, I'd see if I could get a cheaper price/better location, as the forecast has probably caused a lot of cancellations.