A couple of notes:
1. I admittedly don’t pay a lot of attention to the Giants but I wasn’t aware of any tradition that they played on Saturday afternoon. Their 2026 schedule has 7 starts at 1:05 Pacific, 2 at 4:15, 3 at 6:05, and 2 at 7:05. (Seems like a reasonable assortment of start times to accommodate a diverse fanbase, no?)
2. It is generally not possible for teams going out west to schedule the two LA teams back-to-back, because (a) those two teams typically don’t play at home at the same time; and (b) they play in different leagues. Same reason there are very few roadtrips that have Mets/Yankees back-to-back. (There are 2 teams that got lucky with Dodgers/Angels in consecutive series, and 1 got Mets/Yankees).
There are few more teams that get SD/Dodgers back-to-back, and another couple that got SD/Angels back-to-back, but again, there aren’t enough spots for everyone to get so lucky.
3. While this is a lot of travel early, the post-June 7 schedule has only 9 games outside the Eastern time zone, with none starting later than 8 PM Eastern.