Schedule guessing.
The timing hasn’t been announced yet, but I stumbled across a listing of time slots that TBS has blocked out for the playoffs. With that and some idea of where the games are going to be played, I’ve put together a guess for when the Phils are playing and I’m not happy.
The games start Wednesday and the times blocked out are 3, 6:30, and 10. The late game is obviously going to be the Red Sox at the Angels since that’s the only West Coast game. The other two are the National League games in Philadelphia and Chicago. Regardless of who’s playing who, I’d find it hard to believe that they’re going to pass up the Cubs in prime time. Net result is another 3 pm start for the postseason for the Phillies.
Thursday’s an interesting question since the times listed were the same, but the games are going to be played in Tampa, Philadelphia, and Chicago. They aren’t crazy enough to have a game that starts at 9 pm local time are they? (Or 10 if they put an East coast location there.) I’m guessing that they’ll be moved up two hours to 1, 4:30, and 8, and once again I suspect the Cubs get the prime time slot. My suspicion is that the Phils will get the middle slot.
The NL is off on Friday, but the time slots are 5 (I’m guessing in Tampa) and 8:30 (presumably in California). On Saturday the starting times are 6 and 9:30, and I think the late game has to be the one in Los Angeles, so if the Mets are the wild card we’re looking at another late game three.
Sunday is looking like a mess, with only three time slots listed and an awful lot of uncertainty because they’ll rejuggle things if one of the NL series only goes 3 games. But if the Phils are playing the Dodgers, they could be playing at 10. Game 5 has Tuesday time slots of 4:30 and 8. If both series are still going I’m guessing it’s going to be the Phillies playing at 4:30.
Overall it looks like there are going to be some odd sleep and work schedules if you want to watch these games.