Throughout the Championship Series, baseball has made some interesting decisions about game times. It doesn’t take a genius to see which of the four remaining teams has the biggest fan base. Baseball doesn’t need to cater to the Dodgers any more than they already do, but from a strictly business standpoint, they should be working to put the Los Angeles market in the best position.
The Yankees are the biggest team in baseball, but the Dodgers are right behind them. In no universe would baseball ever let the Yankees play outside of primetime, and you’d think the Dodgers would be the same. But for some reason, with the ALCS and NLCS games scheduled at the same time on Monday, the 8:00 p.m. primetime slot went to a Guardians-Rays game.
I’m from Cleveland, so I’m not complaining about the primetime slot, but this move doesn’t make any sense logistically. The Dodgers and Brewers have been the two best teams in baseball all season; that series will get far more attention than anything the AL could’ve fielded, especially when the ALCS will rely on small-ball and what many see as a less attractive version of the sport.
But let’s think of this from a fan’s perspective. For teams in the central and western time zones, the first pitch of a semifinal happened at 5:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. local time. No other major US sport would ever do something this dumb, but it really makes no sense for a sport like baseball.
MLB is defined by it’s regional fan bases, it tends to lack a lot of cross over between fanbases. People watch their favorite team, and occasionally put on other games. The sport should be making it as easy as possible for those fans to watch the games, even if that means the games end up overlapping.
With the series switching cities, baseball did make a smart correction and let the game happening on the West Coast get the late time slot, but that’s now created a whole new issue. The Guardians on less than a days noticed, moved their first pitch of game three back from 6:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. due to inclement weather.
That decision would make more sense if the chance of rain got above 50% more than four hours after the previously scheduled first pitch time. Thursday is going to be terrible weather no matter when the games played. Shockingly, a sport happening outside in Cleveland during the month of October is going to have terrible weather. Now you’ve punished any Cleveland fan that previously purchased tickets, as they now have to find a way to get out of work to even attend this game.
And maybe the biggest issue of it all comes to how baseball handles ticket prices. We saw in games one and two in Tampa, that stadium was pretty empty. At some point greedy owners will quit overcharging fans because they think the playoffs means the tickets have to be egregiously priced.
Cleveland was already struggling to sell out a 6:00 p.m. game, but now it’s going to be a nightmare to sellout a 1:00 p.m. game. Also, MLB was able to release even more, cheap tickets for the Guardians after the time shifted. Maybe you should have already had tickets at that price instead of gouging your faithful fans who bought tickets for double the current market price.
But that’s how baseball operates. The sport is finally growing again, fan interest is at record highs, and this will be the last bit of baseball for the next year plus.
