Anatomy of a Major League Schedule

I admit it.  I'm a logistics geek.  I like to know how systems work; I like to figure out how systems work; I like to make systems work.  Systems like the Major League schedule.  Back in the early 80's living in the Bay Area, I got an A's and a Giants pocket schedule every year so I could plan the games I wanted to attend.  I also wanted to familiarize myself with who they played during the year.  Each year, I noticed patterns in the schedules.  Then toward the mid-80's, before the internet, I wrote to every team during the off season asking for their pocket schedules.  This way I could plan trips to other ballparks, etc.  I noticed patterns in all the schedules.

This brings me to the overall schedule.  Until just a few years ago, a literal mom and pop team in somewhere like Connecticut, drafted up the schedule on their kitchen table.  It's now done by a corporate firm with computers.  I became most familiar with the 12 team NL scheduling format (1969-1992), so I'll write mostly about that.  The schedule maker grouped teams together geographically for travel efficiency.  The Giants would travel to, or host, groups of teams at a time, generally.  The groups were broken into 1) SF, LA & SD; 2) CIN, HOU & ATL; 3) PIT, STL & CHI and 4) NY, PHI & MON.  It made sense for teams flying out to the west coast to hit all the cities to save on travel, etc.  The same was generally true of the AL schedule with 14 teams, although it was more complicated, as there were an odd number of teams in each division.

Each NL team played 18 games against division teams (roughly three 3-game series at home, and three on the road) and 12 against each team in the other division (roughly two 3-game series at home, and two on the road).  The even number of teams made it easy to play against only your own division the last several weeks of the season, so the pennant races could be the focus.  The above number of games against each team came to a total of 162.  When the early 60's expansion took place, each team played each of the other 9 teams 18 times, 162 total.  They kept a similar feel when expansion took place again in '69.

The season is 26 weeks long (half of 52 weeks in a year), and each week is generally divided into a weekday series (M, Tu, W or Tu, W, Th) and a weekend series (F, Sa & Su).  Sometimes there are four game series, M-Th in the week or Th-Su or F-M over a weekend.  There are generally 52 series slots over a 26 week season, with one taken for the All-Star break, leaving 51 series slots for regular season play.  Now, the 10 team/162 game and the 12 team/two division/162 game schedules had (six series times nine other teams = 54) and (six series times five division teams = 30 plus four series times six teams = 24 for a total of 54) series to be played.  The logistical problem was to cram 54 series into 51 slots.  This was accomplished by use of the two-game series.  In playing six games against a team, split a three-and-three game series set into a two-and-four game series set.  Put two game series back-to-back in the weekday slot on Mon-Tues and Wed-Thurs, then the accompanying four game series elsewhere in the season.  Do this three times, and 54 series can fit into 51 slots.  Pretty clever.

The beauty of these older schedule formats is that every team plays other teams the same number of games.  An even number of games at that, so that there are equal numbers of games at home and on the road.  They played each other the same number of series.  The schedules were both balanced and symmetrical.  With the adaptation of 14 team leagues, odd numbers of teams in a division, the three division format with differing number of teams in each division, interleague play with certain "rivalry" matchups, and a 14 team AL and 16 team NL, today's MLB schedule is a complete nightmare.  It makes little sense from a position of fairness and having a level playing field for all.

The schedule makers have also had to take other factors into consideration.  Maximizing attendance with strategic matchups.  Teams make requests of the schedule.  Holidays.  Etc.  Opening Days are usually sellouts, so try not to schedule good drawing road teams like the Yankees for other teams' home openers.  That would be a waste of a sellout.  Bad drawing teams usually play more road openers.  The Reds are baseball's oldest team, so they traditionally open at home.  Schedule bad weather teams to open on the road.  Canadian teams are on the road for US holidays and at home for Canadian holidays to maximize attendance.  Interleague games are not as popular as baseball claims, so they are generally scheduled mostly on weekends during good weather when school is out to maximize attendance and make it look like a good idea.  Local holidays, too, like scheduling the Red Sox at home for Patriot's Day.  An example of team requests might be wanting a home game on an anniversary date of a great moment in that team's history.  The Giants requested to be at home on Oct. 3, 2001 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Bobby Thompson's Shot Heard 'Round the World - against the Dodgers no less.  New ballparks, too.  When the Giants built a new yard, they wanted to both close Candlestick and open PacBell/SBC/AT&T against their arch-rival Dodgers.  Back when double-headers were a popular tool to increase attendance, the well-drawing Dodgers didn't need them, so they requested no double headers on their schedule.

So, overall the schedule is a major undertaking that has only increased in complexity over the decades.  The logistic geek that I am, I'd love to be part of that operation.  Personally, I'd like to see baseball address this monster and get back to some kind of symmetrical format.  Now that I've bored you to tears, you deserve something special if you've read this whole post.  Unless you like schedules like I do.

2011 MLB Schedule Change

I noticed that the 2011 regular season schedule has a huge change in it, breaking from a tradition that has been kept for longer than I've been alive.  Traditionally, the schedule is 26 weeks long, and starts at the beginning of the week and ending on a weekend Sunday.  Next year, it seems to be moved up a series, and starts with three game series on a Friday and ends with three game series on a Wednesday.

I'm not sure what's up, but I heard some rumors that baseball wants to change the post-season a bit and make the league division series seven games.  I wonder if moving the season up three or four days is the remedy to accommodate this instead of pushing the World Series back yet again further into chilly November.  There's also a nasty rumor that in the next couple of years MLB wants to add an extra set of wild card teams.  Oh, please, NO!  I'll write about the anatomy of a regular season schedule during this offseason.

Yet Another Post-Season Scheduling Absurdity

Okay, Major League Baseball has a bunch of idiots running the post-season scheduling. I've written about this before, here, here, here and here. And here and here.

What I never knew prior to this year is that the home field advantage team gets to choose which division series schedule to play in. They can make their decision up until one hour after the regular season is completed. So the Yankees got to choose, but with one problem. The regular season didn't end until the Twins/Tigers tie-breaker was completed - on Tuesday, due to a Vikings game on Monday Night Football. So the Yankees could screw the Red Sox by making them play the next day with a warning only hours before the game. The tie-breaker game went 12 innings. Instead, they chose to screw the winner of the tie-breaker by forcing them to take a red-eye to Yankee Stadium where they would play the next day on sleep they could get only on the plane.

Baseball desperately needs to get rid of the guess work and pre-schedule which divisions play which and who hosts which games. They also need to ditch the network time slot pecking order. I'd hate to be a team's traveling secretary in the month of October.

Playoffs Should Have One Day Off Maximum

It would help greatly if baseball had a one day off maximum between each round of series. None of the division series went five games. Both National League division series were over by Sunday, and the AL series on Monday. The playoffs should have gone to the next round by Wednesday, instead of the scheduled Thursday and Friday. Dead time takes people's interest away, even if for an extra day. Moving the post season up one day won't hurt anything. It's bad enough that extra days off were added both to the middle of series and between them, but adding any more because of short series is over the top.

Making The MLB Schedule

I read a few interesting articles about the making of the MLB schedule. For 25 years, 1980 to 2004 it was a mom and pop operation...quite literally. A husband and wife team prepared it each year. Now, a consulting firm puts it together. With much criticism of the schedule, the articles explained just how difficult it is to make.

I've studied schedules for decades and love to find patterns, trends and changes from era to era. I'll go into more detail in a future post.

In recent years, since realignment, we have had an unbalanced schedule, yet also asymmetrical. In years past, it was unbalanced but symmetrical. Before division play it was both balanced and symmetrical. I'll also talk about the pro's and con's of each type of schedule.

Saturday Night Baseball?

For decades, three teams have traditionally played more than half of their games during the day. The Chicago Cubs, the Oakland A's and the San Francisco Giants. The Cubs didn't get stadium lights put in until 1988, and day baseball is still the tradition on the Northside. The A's and Giants have always played a high percentage of day games, and always a day game on Saturday, because of the cool, foggy nighttime weather in the Bay Area, with the midweek getaway day usually played under the sun, too.

Saturday afternoon at the ballpark in the sunshine has always been a treat. But things have changed, and the Giants have just this year started playing a large majority of their Saturday games at night. Why? The short answer is television. FOX has the rights to the daytime slot and teams are forbidden to televise their own games during that time. Since the Bonds era is over and the Giants really suck, FOX isn't going to show the Giants anytime soon. They were on FOX nearly every Saturday in at least a regional game for years. Now the Giants have nothing more than their historic name as a national TV draw. So, to take in TV revenue, they're moving most of their Saturday games to a night starting time so either the local FOX Sports Net or their new channel 11 can carry the game, and the Giants can still pull in some revenue. TV money rules baseball. Just my guess, anyway.

One Game Series?

Aside from the dumb regular season games in Japan, the opening game this year was the Braves in Washington for the opening of the Nats' new ballpark. What was truly strange about this is that each team played a different team in its next game. They played a one game series. Kind of a waste of travel, huh? But then, a one game series really isn't a series because it takes two things to be in series.

Eliminate Ratings-Based Playoff Game Starting Times

Many ticket holders for game 4 in St. Louis went to bed tonight not even knowing what time their game will start tomorrow. This needs to change.

Tonight the Mets eliminated the Dodgers by winning the NLDS. Earlier in the day, the Tigers eliminated the Yankees. Three of the four playoff series have been decided, leaving only the Padres/Cardinals with a game tomorrow.

What stinks about this is that the game times of all playoff games are arranged according to a TV ratings pecking order. The most watched game will be scheduled in the prime-time slot (8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific), the next at 4pm/1pm, then 1pm/10am. Because the A's/Twins series was already over, the Pads/Cards were the bottom slot. But because the other series were decided today, they were kicked up into the prime time slot. But this didn't happen until the Mets/Dodgers game was over - well after 10pm Central time in St. Louis.

The Yankees are almost guaranteed the prime time slot for every playoff game they play because they are the top rated team. The only reason they had the afternoon game today was because the combination of two markets, NY/LA for the Mets/Dodgers game, would draw better. Teams like the A's and Twins are stuck always playing day games during the week just because they don't get national TV draw, making it tougher on their fans to see games. Smaller market teams get game times shuffled at the last minute for games 4 and 5 just because larger market series happen to end. I know first hand that this sucks.

Baseball Proposal: Home and Away Series

The baseball schedule traditionally has teams playing each other in series, home and away, one week apart. It doesn't happen as much anymore, but as an example, there are many teams who play each other the last weekend of the season that also play each other the previous weekend, in the other city. This happens with weekday series, too.

I always thought it strange that there could be six games out of nine against a team, with three in between against somebody else, and you could miss their top starters altogether because they pitched in the interim series. My proposal would be to play six in a row against the same team, three in one city, the next three in the other. You'd be guaranteed that all starters would face the other team. This would be exciting.

Playoff Schedule Nightmare

Well, the playoffs are here with us again. That means several precious idiocies thrust upon us for yet another October. TV is in the middle of it, of course. I'll have to explain each item first before I put them together to make my point. Bear with me.

The first idiocy is the homefield advantage brainchild. Another NFL lightbulb. The three division winners in each league are ranked or seeded for the playoffs based on their final records. Home field advantage for each series played is based on a combination of these records and the teams that are remaining (for the LCS). If two teams tie with the same record, NFL type tie-breakers are enforced.

The second idiocy is the TV ratings-based time slots for all playoff games. The top ratings draw team matchups are placed in the top TV time slots. Of course this just guarantees the Yankees the lion's share of prime time, and should I say, sensible, time slots. Eight-oh-five Eastern time is not too different from their normal 7:35 starts. The ratings bottom dwellers have to painfully endure late night games after early day games and West coast twighlight finishes. Not only that, but as each of the ongoing playoff series are concluded, time slots are re-shuffled based on the remaining matchups' ratings potentials. Teams may have no idea when they're playing their next games.

The results of all this? If a high seed TV slot series has a chance of finishing their series early due to a 3-0 sweep, the other series can move up only if that series actually ends. I remember a situation where the top TV seed had the prime time slot (late game, East Coast time) with a chance to end their series that night. Another team would play their game either at 1pm or 7pm the next day, depending on the outcome of the late game in the other league. The late game went extra innings and didn't end until after midnight. So the fans and teams in the time-to-be-announced game went to bed that night not even knowing the time of their game the next day. If you're a fan with a job and you have tickets, you're screwed. Just tell your boss you'll be taking the entire month of October on flex time.

With the homefield advantage pecking order combined with last-minute playoff spot clinches during the last weekend of the season (many times on the last day of the season), and all contending teams jockeying for position, ticket holding fans (season ticket holders are forced to buy tickets in "strip" format, that is, all possible games that can be played at the time of purchase) may not even know until Sunday afternoon who or even if they'll be playing on Tuesday, and even whether the game is at home or on the road, and even the time. The LCS is the same way. If you're a non-homefield advantage division winner, you'll either host games 3, 4 and 5 or 1, 2, 6 and 7 depending on whether the HFA or lower seed team wins.

In 2003, Giants fans found out at the last minute that they would host mid-week day games against Florida in games 1 and 2 of the division series. Not an easy ticket to use or sell even for a team that sells out its entire season. I remember seeing front row seats next to the 3rd base dugout for sale on eBay at face value on the day of the game... with NO offers. I woulda gone, cept'n I hadda work.

Baseball's nightmaringly complex playoff bowl of spaghetti makes it very difficult for fans to plan to go to games. No wonder few LDS games sell out. Baseball's post season used to be very simple and orderly. LCS series alternated home field advantage each year, East one year, West the next. The ALCS started on Tuesday one year, Wednesday the next with the NLCS the opposite. The World Series alternated from AL to NL, year to year. It used to be that a fan could say, "three years from now, game 3 of the NLCS will be in the Eastern city on Friday" or something similar. Now, only God knows.

Divisional Play

At the time of this post, the entire NL West is under .500 and the entire NL East is above .500. This means that the last place team in the East has a better record than the first place in the West. Truly amazing. For the dismal Giants and their sewer of a season, with only 4 teams in all of baseball with worse records, this normally would be a write-off. But they're only 6 1/2 games out of first. The ticket office actually has a reason to send out playoff ticket invoices to their season ticket holders... at 15 games under .500.

This says a few things about the current division and schedule format. Since there are 3 divisions in each league plus interleague play, even an unbalanced schedule results in an overwhelming majority of games being played outside the division. As bad as the NL West is this year, I don't expect the winner to be under .500 because the end of the season is heavily weighted with divisional rivalries playing each other. When one team loses, another has to win. This ought to push somebody over the .500 mark by default. But stranger things could happen.