Welcome to The Opener, where every weekday morning you’ll get a fresh, topical column to start your day from one of SI.com’s MLB writers.
One of the minor joys of second-half baseball is the delight of the surprisingly good match-up—one that did not particularly register when the schedule was released, neither a divisional face-off nor a geographic rivalry, but that suddenly stands out now as captivating all the same. A series like this requires some good teams and some good drama. Most of all, it requires good timing. The storylines can shift so quickly in late summer, melting under the heat of rising playoff races, that a week is all it takes for any given pairing to go from must-watch to meh.