Games start on October 8th. You were fooled by the schedule (or more likely the Scores page?). The actual
Schedule page has them listed as normal or "Preseason".
It's confusing though. Why they did it is that they wanted the teams in the Global Series to have an easier time travel and wear wise, i.e. their schedule is drawn out a bit more compared to other teams to account for the travel. This is probably better than travelling during the season. Maybe there's more they can do in the future though, increase the teams and play a mini series and then have a bigger rest while returning back...
Either way confusing the way they display it on the website and have preseason games running the same time. Running a long preseason means ticket revenue though, so I bet it's all a big compromise and this is what we got this year... (And see Doggy's post above for thoughts on 84 games etc.)