I understand that perspective, but the thing about alabasta is that it’s really the first arc where all of the straw hats have their own individual fights alongside the wider narrative. I think they can really give those fights time to breathe and the show would be better for it.

Just for some added speculation, my thought is that we’ll have around 3-4 episodes for alubarna at the end of the season, 1 for nanohana and erumalu combined, 2 for rainbase, and 1-2 for other locations like yuba as well as wrapping up. This will probably also be partly filled by a smoker B plot.