Why Does The World Series Not Start Until Friday?

Image credit: Los Angeles Dodgers (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

When the Dodgers finished off the Mets in Game 6 of the National League Championship Series on Sunday, it ensured that the baseball world would have a five-day wait until the start of the World Series. 

The 2024 World Series between the Dodgers and Yankees will begin on Friday, Oct. 25, and will play until Saturday, Nov. 2 if it goes all seven games. 

That leads to the obvious question: Why is there such a long gap between the end of the two League Championship Series and the start of the World Series?

MLB did actually plan for this. When it released the postseason schedule in early August, it did allow for moving up the dates of the World Series if both LCS finished early.

But with a five-game ALCS and a six-game NLCS, these series did not finish quickly enough to trigger that schedule adjustment. If both league championship series had wrapped up by Saturday, Oct. 19 then the first game of the World Series would have been moved up to Tuesday, Oct. 22. In that scenario, the World Series would have run from Oct. 22 to Oct. 30.

So when the Mets forced a Game 6 in the NLCS, they also made sure that the World Series would start on Friday. If the NLCS had gone to seven games, it would have wrapped up on Monday, Oct. 21. If the ALCS had gone to seven games, it would have finished on Tuesday, Oct. 22.

So if the ALCS had gone seven games, a Friday World Series start made perfect sense (especially since the league had to allow for the possibility of a rainout that could have pushed the game back a day to Wednesday). And if the NLCS had finished one game sooner, we’d be getting ready for the World Series to start a day from now. Instead, everyone gets a full work week to get ready for the World Series.

World Series Schedule

Start times for the games have yet to be announced. All games are set to be broadcast on Fox.

Game 1			Friday, Oct. 25		Yankees at Dodgers
Game 2			Saturday, Oct. 26		Yankees at Dodgers
Game 3			Monday, Oct. 28		Dodgers at Yankees
Game 4			Tuesday, Oct. 29		Dodgers at Yankees
Game 5 (if necessary)			Wednesday, Oct. 30		Dodgers at Yankees
Game 6 (if necessary)			Friday, Nov. 1		Yankees at Dodgers
Game 7 (if necessary)			Saturday, Nov. 2		Yankees at Dodgers