The Cubs and Red Sox are taking an unusual detour to finish the regular season.
With a nor’easter bearing down on New England and threatening to hammer the area with heavy rain and wind, MLB moved the final game of the three-game set from Fenway Park to Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida.
The teams will not play on Saturday. Instead, the series finale is now set for Sunday at 3:05 p.m.
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The scheduling shuffle started with a planned doubleheader in Boston on Friday. The game originally slated for Sunday was moved up and played Friday at 1:05 p.m., where the Red Sox pulled out a 4-3 win.
The original Friday matchup was then pushed to 5:35 p.m. That left Saturday night’s game, originally scheduled for 7:15 p.m., as the final piece to be moved - and it was shifted all the way to Florida.
MLB said both clubs will travel south Friday night after the doubleheader wraps.
Red Sox manager Chad Tracy said Friday that the league was waiting as long as possible before making a call while keeping an eye on "the giant cell out in the Atlantic that's coming at us."
"Is this going to go below us, or is there an avenue that we could play here?" Tracy said (via the Boston Globe).
The relocation is a rare one. Excluding the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s the first time since 2017 that a Major League Baseball game or series has been moved. The last such case came when the Yankees and Rays shifted a series from Tropicana Field to Citi Field because of Hurricane Irma.
This move works because the Rays are finishing their season on the road against the Phillies, leaving Tropicana Field available for the Cubs and Red Sox to use.
Both teams are headed to the postseason as wild card clubs. Boston’s 4-3 win in the first game of Friday’s doubleheader locked up the fifth seed in the American League, setting up a trip to Yankee Stadium for the best-of-three Wild Card Series. The Cubs still have some work to do, needing either two more wins or one more win plus one more Phillies loss to guarantee no worse than the fifth seed in the National League.
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