It seems like the weather is having some fun with the Major League Baseball schedule. I think we’ve had a game cancelled due to one weather related issue or another since the season opened. We’ve had games rained out. We’ve had games snowed out and we’ve had games cancelled because it was too cold out.
Now just about everyone has an idea on how to fix the schedule; so let’s take a look at some of them and see if any of them could actually work.
The obvious one you hear all the time is just have the teams that play in warm weather cities or have domes as the home team at the start of the schedule.
Now of all intensive purposes this idea should work, but is it fair to those teams that would be forced to start the season at home. How many games would they have to play at home to start the season? Would 5 games be enough or would it have to be 10 games or maybe even 20. You’d think that players and their families might like the idea of opening the season at home, but if you eat up those home games early it may result in longer road trips through the summer months. Attendance would also play a factor in this plan. While opening day is a big deal and will sell out for most if not all teams after that attendances drops off. Remember kids are still in school when the baseball season starts and not all parents are willing to take their kid out of school for an afternoon game or allow them to stay out as late as it might take for a game to end. This may be the most interesting of all the ideas purposed, but would they ever be able to even out the schedule for those teams that would have to start the season with long home stands.
Another one of the obvious suggestions is to just shorten the regular season schedule. Right now teams play 162 regular season games. What would be a good number of games to shorten the season to that would make this idea work. Also which games do you eliminate from the schedule. Do you reduce the number of games you play against the teams in your own division? Could they possible eliminate inter-league play to reduce the number of games? Of course there would have to be concessions from not only the owners, but the players. By reducing the numbers of games you cut into an owners revenue. Would the players union be willing to decrease the salaries of players if the number of games was reduced. You also have to wonder how many owners would be willing to give up the revenue from the games that would be removed from the schedule. It’s an interesting idea, but good luck getting everyone to agree to it.
One of the other suggestions out there is to just push the start of the regular season back. Of course this idea would work, but with 162 games on the schedule you’d also be pushing back the day that the season ends. The regular season is scheduled to end on September 30th, do we really want to push games back into early October and then have the possibility of the playoffs running into November; which may happen anyway. While it’s great that your favorite team makes the playoffs or hopefully the World Series the weather can turn ugly in some East coast and Midwest cities that time of the year. There is a way that this idea would work, but I’m not sure it’s something the players union would go for.
Here’s how this idea could work. You push the start of the baseball season back until some time in early to mid-April. Now you’ve still got to squeeze 162 games in by the end of September. If you added split or day/night doubleheaders to the schedule on Saturdays you’d be able to move the start of the season back. You wouldn’t even have to make that many adjustments to the schedule, you’d just be adding that second Saturday game.
Let’s take this seasons schedule to use as a guideline. If the season was pushed back and opening on Friday April 13th that would give baseball 24 Saturdays to figure out ho to make up the changes in the schedule. The season would start 14 days later than it did this season. I’m sure there would still be some weather issues here and there, but you’re going to get that every year.
Of course these would have to be split doubleheaders because just like in shorten the schedule there are owners that aren’t going to be willing to give up that game revenue. The biggest hurdle to over come in this would be working it out with the players union. Major League Baseball is already allowing teams to call up an extra player when they have a rescheduled game that becomes part of a doubleheader. Is it possible that there might have to be an extra roster spot added if say teams are going to play 10 split doubleheaders during the season.
Now I’m sure that each of these ideas would work in one way or another, but working out the logistics will be the biggest issues.
Do you like one of these ideas or do you have one of your own that you’d like to see Major League Baseball try. Maybe you actually like things as they are and you don’t want to see any changes to the game. Please fell free to leave a comment and let me know your idea.
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