How to Fix Baseball, Part III: Balance the Schedule
Baseball’s regular season schedule has been a source of trouble since expanding to 30 teams in 1998. With the Houston Astros moving over the American League, MLB has prudently accepted having at least one interleague series taking place year-round. Yet, the current schedule still makes no sense.
The problem is lack of balance. The current format looks like this:
- 19 games × 4 opponents in own division (76 games)
- 6 or 7 games × 10 opponents in other divisions within league (66 games)
- 20 inter-league games
This makes no sense. Why do teams play an odd number of games in the division? Why do some teams play extra games against non-division opponents? And why limit the marketing of baseball’s star players by limiting interleague games to a maximum of 20?
Major League Baseball’s regular season schedule needs to be balanced for every team. Ideally, divisional games should still hold precedent, but fans should also be able to take in stars from around the league in person more frequently. This is an easy-to-solve problem, and as a bonus, we can shorten baseball’s already too-long slate, and solve MLB’s chief marketing problem: lack of marketing for its young stars.
The New Schedule
Divisional Games
Teams play each of their four divisional opponents 12 times — two three-games sets at home, and two three-game sets on the road. This makes for 48 games with your division foes — 24 home, and 24 away. Familiarity breeds contempt.
Non-Divisional League Games
Teams play each of their ten in-league non-divisional opponents six times — one three-game set at home, and one three-game set on the road. That’s 60 games with teams in your league. Everyone sees everyone else in the league once in everyone’s park.
Interleague Games*
Yes, we are expanding interleague play. Get over it and embrace change.
With the exception of each team’s interleague rival (which will be explained in a moment), teams play one three-game set with every team in the opposing league. The format is such that each team plays in every other team’s park once every two seasons. So for example, the Yankees would play three against the Dodgers in the Bronx in even years and in Chavez Ravine in odd years. Now every team gets to play every other team once per year, and fans in every market can see all of the game’s stars once every two years, no matter where they are. That’s good marketing.
Interleague Rivalry Games
Teams play their designated inter league rival six times, in two three-game sets — one home, and one away. For example, the Yankees play the Mets three times in the Bronx and three times in Queens every year, without exception. This adds to the “familiarity breeds contempt” theory by adding a bit more significance to the interleague rivalries.
Now, not everyone has a rival, but most do. As for who those rivals are, I tend to agree with MLB’s assignments from 2013, which were:
- Boston/Philadelphia
- Baltimore/Washington
- NY Mets/NY Yankees
- Miami/Tampa Bay
- Toronto/Atlanta (This is the only one that’s weird)
- Chicago White Sox/Chicago Cubs
- Cincinnati/Cleveland
- Detroit/Pittsburgh
- Kansas City/St. Louis
- Milwaukee/Minnesota
- Houston/Colorado
- LA Angels/LA Dodgers
- Oakland/San Francisco
- San Diego/Seattle
- Texas/Arizona.
Here’s how it looks:
Add it all up and you have this:
48 divisional games + 60 non-divisional games + 42 interleague games + 6 interleague rivalry games = 156 total games.
There. We balanced the schedule, making sure everyone played everyone else once, and that every team goes to every other team’s park at least once every two years, all while preserving the significance of divisional play and the excitement of interleague rivalries. The schedule becomes a more accurate measuring stick for who is the best team over the marathon of the regular season. And we did all of that while also shrinking the regular season by a week.
But Jeff, shrinking the regular season will mess up all of the numbers for records!
If Roger Maris were around, he’d tell you to go cry him a river. The Steroid Era effectively ruined all of baseball’s iconic numbers for good. And if you don’t think so, go ahead and tell me how many career home runs baseball’s all-time leader has. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Work with the numbers you have now and deal with it, baseball nerd.
Now back to the slightly shortened 156-game schedule. This would lop off about a week of the regular season on the calendar. Have double-headers on Saturdays, which is what I’d also prefer, and you can shrink it up even further, by up to a month.
Why is this important? Stay tuned to the next post to find out.
