PHILADELPHIA — Game 3 of the World Series was postponed Monday because of rain, with the Houston Astros and the Philadelphia Phillies tied at one game apiece. The series is scheduled to resume Tuesday, and in place of eliminating the built-in travel day, each game will be pushed back one day.
The day off between Games 5 and 6 will be moved from Thursday to Friday, and if there is a Game 7, it will be played Sunday night, pitting the World Series against Sunday night football. Baseball officials had hoped to avoid that, because the N.F.L. is generally a ratings behemoth.
M.L.B. had planned for this to be the first World Series with no games on a Sunday since the advent of Sunday night football in 1987. Now, if there is a Game 7, it will start shortly after 8 p.m. Eastern, roughly the same time as the N.F.L. game between the Tennessee Titans and Kansas City. Game 5 on Thursday will compete with the N.F.L. game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Houston Texans, creating an unusual dual-sport matchup of the two cities.
“We think we have a great product that fans want to see,” said Rob Manfred, the M.L.B. commissioner, “and we’re going to put the games on when it makes sense to play the games and hope we get a good audience.”
The alternative would have been to play five days in a row without a day off. That might have benefited the Astros, who have a deeper pitching staff and would be better positioned to withstand the potential workload on the bullpens and the starting pitchers.
Manfred said that in order to preserve the competitive integrity of the series, it was important to maintain a travel day.
“I’d like to play as close to the conditions that they thought they were going to get at the beginning as possible, without disrupting rotations and bullpens and all of that,” he said.
The Phillies will skip Noah Syndergaard, who was originally scheduled to start Game 3, and go with Ranger Suarez, who pitched two-thirds of an inning in Game 1 on Friday in Houston. Dusty Baker, the Astros manager, said that he would stick with Lance McCullers for Game 3 on Tuesday, as planned.
The new schedule will be especially helpful for Zack Wheeler, who started Game 2 for the Phillies on Saturday and will now get an extra day off before possibly pitching again in a potential Game 6.
“He’s fine,” Phillies Manager Rob Thomson said. “It’s just, it’s late in the season — velocity’s dropped a little bit. He’s fatigued. I just feel like he needs more time.”
The postponement was announced shortly after 7 p.m., with light rain falling and a few thousand fans already in the park. The rain soon stopped, but forecasts called for heavy, consistent rain during the period that the game was scheduled to be played.
The last World Series rainout was Game 6 in 2011, between the Rangers and the Cardinals in St. Louis.
But Monday was not the first time that rain in Philadelphia had caused upheaval at a World Series game. In 2008, Game 5 was halted after the top of the sixth inning, with the score tied, 2-2. The next day was rainy, too, and so the game did not resume until the day after. Fans waited two days to see if the Phillies could close out the Series in what amounted to a three-and-a-half-inning game.
They did, and in an unusual scene, as the Phillies batted first that night (in the bottom of the sixth inning), despite being the home team. They went on to win the game, 4-3, clinching their last World Series title to date.
James Wagner contributed reporting.
