Raging weasel
Footballguy
I understand all that but they shouldn't have to play more pre season games after playing 2 real games. If they played Sat-Sun more people could watch(here and there) and the players could get more rest after the trip before playing again.I think having these overseas regular season games in the middle of preseason is dumb. Why can't they just wait another couple weeks to play them? Especially this year with the supposedly next great Japanese pitcher making his first MLB start in one of them. Fans would like to see this guy pitch but the game starts at like 6am.
3AM here but I understand why MLB is doing it this way. With the travel and the tight in-season scheduling, it's tough to carve out time for a two game series in Asia. You'd have to allow a 2-3 day buffer on either side of the roadtrip.
The potential benefits of growing the game globally exceed those of starting the season on a Tuesday afternoon in Cincinnati (sorry shuke). MLB has done this before with the A's and Mariners opening the season in the Tokyo Dome and we all somehow managed to survive.