AL wild-card game Sept 30 begins MLB playoff sked

NEW YORK (AP) The World Series is scheduled to open on a Tuesday instead of Wednesday this year.

In 2007, Major League Baseball switched from a Saturday to a Wednesday start with the goal of playing more games on nights that typically draw the largest television audiences.

The new schedule will skip Thursday, a big day for TV viewing, and add a game on Friday, when audiences are generally much smaller. But the switch means that the World Series will go up against the NFL on at most one night instead of potentially three.

The World Series last opened on a Tuesday in 1990.

Fox also announced Thursday that five of the seven NL championship series games would be on cable network Fox Sports 1 for the first time. Only Games 1 and 6, both on Saturdays, would be on Fox.

The postseason will open with the AL wild-card game Sept. 30 on TBS. The NL playoffs will start with the wild-card game Oct. 1 on ESPN, which adds the round under its new contract with MLB.

The regular season ends Sept. 28, and any tiebreakers would be played the next day.

Both AL division series openers are scheduled for Oct. 2 on TBS. The NL division series openers will be Oct. 3 on FS1.

The AL championship series begins Oct. 10 on TBS and the NLCS opens the next day.

The World Series is set to start Oct. 21 at the home of the AL champion.