The Los Angeles Dodgers head into the upcoming season with championship aspirations after falling just one win short of a World Series title in 2017. They return the same core from a year ago that helped win a Major League-best 104 games.
Before the Dodgers can officially begin their march to another National League West title, NL pennant and appearance in the World Series, they must first complete Spring Training. A short offseason has given way to three weeks of baseball, which is nearly the same amount of time until the regular season.
While the spring largely comprised of morning workouts and early-afternoon games, Kenley Jansen believes change is necessary.
He prefers a model that would better align with a regular-season schedule, which would call for more Cactus League night games, via Bill Shaikin of the L.A. Times:
“We play at 7 o’clock at night” during the season, Jansen said. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman agreed with Jansen’s notion, but doesn’t feel change is possible because of the likelihood day games would follow night games:
“I do think there are benefits to playing more night games in spring training,” Friedman said. “Obviously, that’s the majority of the games during the season.”
He said the Dodgers hope to discuss the issue further with other teams and the city of Glendale, the home of Camelback Ranch. What the Dodgers want to avoid is alternating between night games at their ballpark and day games elsewhere.
“If that’s happening too often, there’s an inconsistency to that,” Friedman said. “That could eat into the value of what you are doing in the first place. Until we have a better grasp of it, we opted for consistency.”
Of the Dodgers’ 15 home Cactus League games, only four are scheduled at night. They lost the first, on Thursday to the Cleveland Indians, and next play under the lights on Saturday against the Chicago Cubs.
Independent of their scheduled start times this spring, Jansen is not due to see much work. He was scheduled for his 2018 debut on Friday but was held back because of tightness in his hamstring.
