Isn't this because they play 2 games in Houston before needing a day to travel to Chicago? They need to play B2B days, travel, B2B, travel, Game 5 or it takes too long. You have to stagger the series or you have days with no baseball and they don't want teams playing at the same time.
Not everyone works 9-5. People working the night shift probably LOVE having an afternoon game to watch (instead of missing every night game). People live stream games, people record games and watch them later. Pretty sure MLB have smart people who do this for a living and know what's going on.