Despite the ALCS going a full seven games and the Blue Jays not needing to travel anywhere before the World Series starts, we’re now sitting through day three of no baseball.
The reason for this is of course money. MLB and the networks pre-determine the World Series dates and want them locked in ahead of time, which doesn’t allow the natural flow of the LCS games to dictate when the final clash begins. Instead, the possibility of the most extreme scenario is prioritized in case the league with the later
start date in the LCS goes seven games, and then there’s a postponement of Game 6 or 7, and then the road team in that series has to travel to a new destination. Because corporate power runs everything, we can’t have a scenario moving the World Series start date.
The problem with this of course is we get the far, far more common scenario to play out where one LCS is over in four or five games and then that team ends up sitting around for a week (sometimes more) before playing in the biggest series of the year. That’s not baseball!
The team in that position this year is the Dodgers, who have now played just ten baseball games in the last 25 days. But fortunately for them, this works out perfectly because their entire plan revolves around limiting the exposure of their bullpen (which sucks when the team has to play every day). So with extra time off, they can be both aggressive with sending Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow, and Shohei Ohtani deep into games the first time through, and then end up in a situation where they still have plenty of gas in the tank to use their Game 4 and Game 5 starters in relief in Games 6 and 7 if needed.
I would much rather have a scenario where teams are tearing through each other’s roster in the World Series and all the games bleed into each other more, but that’s not what MLB has set up in the back half of October. Of course, the layoff should help Toronto too as it provides more time for George Spring and Bo Bichette to rest their knees, and also allows the team to reset their rotation and bullpen as it was very much trashed after that magnificent ALCS.
With this setup, hopefully the stars will be able to shine starting tomorrow night because both teams have been given every opportunity to front load their artillery.
In the meantime, use this thread to talk about what you’d like for the day, and as always, be good to one another.
