MLB’s Postseason Schedule Contains Pleasant Surprise

Variety’s Jon Weisman on MLB’s postseason schedule, which was released Wednesday:

Major League Baseball released its postseason schedule today, and in doing so revealed that it was eliminating non-travel off days that had been created to give more games primetime exposure on TV.

The marginally compressed schedule will mean that there are more games played on the same day in the two rounds before the World Series. For example, there could be as many as four games on Oct. 4, a Tuesday.

There’s a whole bowl full of good in there. Specifically, the elimination of those non-travel off days that made the first round so ridiculous, at times. Postseason baseball has always de-emphasized the importance of a deep starting rotation -- and thus changed a key dynamic of the regular season -- but those non-travel off days made it even worse.

So, well done, Major League Baseball. Yeah, so there might be four games in one day; we’ll cope.

Meanwhile, the other big news probably isn’t big news because it’s not new, except it’s new to me.

The postseason begins on a Friday ... and the regular season ends on a Wednesday!

For as long as I’ve been paying attention, the regular season ended on a Sunday afternoon. Things were easier that way, when writing after the fact. You could always say a team was “still in the running, heading into the season’s last weekend” or whatever.

It was simple and modestly elegant. It wasn’t necessary; we’ll cope.