This just in: The World Series started.

No, really. I know because I tried to watch the other night and found myself either dozing or admiring Tampa manager Kevin Cash's resolve for leaving his starter in after 40 pitches.

They're calling it "The Rays Way" now.

I'm calling it "football season."

And next spring, provided the perils of a pandemic have been pruned, I'll continue to watch baseball less and less. It's not the game I remember. It's not the game I want to watch. And it begins with "The Rays Way."

Starters who go four innings.

Four outfielders.

Infielders who move around pitch to pitch more than Fred and Ginger.

An analytics mafia using the perceived intellectual base for its findings to intimidate baseball's dramatis personae.

Seriously: The proletariat is so petrified of being labeled simpletons that they play along in the charade. If you don't worship at the altar of analytics, you're not only a philistine, but a particularly dumb one at that.

First, a word on the Rays. Many in the media have used the shortened parameters of 2020 to judge the Rays based on playoff success. Convenient but deficient. Friday night, Tampa played its 78th game of the season. Last year, the Rays played their 78th game on June 23. Translation: Under normal baseball circumstances, it is late June, not late October.

Laud the "Rays Way" until you hyperventilate. I'm telling you this: Yanking your starter after four innings may work in the short term — as it has through this figurative June 23. Report back to me how the bullpen is feeling after game 160 and they're asked to get 12-15 outs every night. And the playoffs haven't even started. The "Rays Way" is no way, if you ask moi.

Then there's Blake Snell. The guy with the best job in sports. Pitch four innings every five days and have every talking head celebrate you as an "ace" and "former Cy Young Award winner."

Snell won the Cy Young in 2018. He threw 180 innings that year. Here are more numbers to consider: In 1975, Catfish Hunter threw his 180th inning of the season on July 12. He would throw 148 more that year and finish with 23 wins. He did not win the Cy Young.

Jim Palmer did. Palmer threw his 180th inning on July 23. He would throw 143 more, and win 23 games as well.

Blake Snell, Jim Palmer and Catfish Hunter have this much in common: part of the male species. That's it. Calling Snell a "Cy Young Award winner" is barely nominal.

Ah, but that's analytics. The more esoteric the better. It's their game now, not ours. The perceived intellectual elite. By invitation only. The great unwashed can keep standing in the $15 beer line asking, "thank you sir, may we have another?"

How bad is it? Read the following. It is verbatim:

"Brett Gardner, after a 115 wRC+/3.6 fWAR/4.0 bWAR season, is right on the cusp of the 20 best Yankees of all time. Averaging career fWAR and bWAR puts him at 40 WAR, right alongside Gil McDougald, Robinson Cano and Phil Rizzuto. Steamer projects him for 1.6 WAR this season, which would move him past Don Mattingly and Jorge Posada, and within striking distance of Thurman Munson."

Brett Gardner: One of the 20 best Yankees of all time. All because of wRC, fWAR and bWAR.

The defense rests, your honor.

I thought being home more in a pandemic would get me reacquainted with baseball. Not so much. I fear Seattle Slew has left the barn and is galloping toward town. Put it this way: About a year ago, I switched to YouTube TV. (Highly recommended, by the way). Two weeks later, it got rid of the YES Network, which meant no Yankees.

The old me would have ditched YouTube TV faster than Rickey Henderson went from first to third. Now? It's just not that important anymore. I survived the summer just fine.

As I type this, there are about 70 college football games on today (Saturday). Ah, football. They may celebrate too many mundane plays and throw the ball too much, but it's still the game I remember. Matt Snell over Blake Snell. All day long.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro