With rain pouring down in Cleveland on Friday, MLB announced that the game would be moved to Sunday due to inclement weather. The teams will now play Game 4 on Saturday at 8 p.m. ET, followed by Game 5 on Sunday at 5 p.m. ET.
“I think the rain just didn’t change. It never really cleared out the way they were hoping,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said after the game was postponed. “It started to get later in the hour, and MLB and both clubs did everything they could to try to get it in.
“It made the most sense, like at this point in this hour, with no guarantee that there wasn’t another band coming.”
The development means the ALCS will conclude with four games in four days in the event of a Game 7, without the traditional off day when the teams would travel from Cleveland back to Tampa.
MLB clearly wanted to avoid that scenario, as the league waited until less than an hour before first pitch to even confirm that first pitch would be indefinitely delayed. The tarp came off the infield at one point, but it was soon put back on.
This development increases the possibility that the NL champion Milwaukee Brewers face an exhausted team, no matter who wins the ALCS, with Game 1 of the World Series scheduled for next Friday, three days after a possible ALCS Game 7 on Tuesday.