Quirks of the Schedule

I've never liked the baseball schedule since they moved to interleague play in 1997 and the current 16/14 split between the NL and AL teams. The schedule is by necessity uneven, but it was so much better when you had the same number of games home and away vs. any team in a division.

In some ways the deterioration of the schedule started when Seattle and Toronto were added in the AL in 1977. The addition of Colorado and Florida to the NL in 1993 evened it up again, but Tampa Bay and Arizona were added in 1998 and Milwaukee switched to the NL that year, which is the current configuration.

But we are stuck with it. My big problem now is that the schedules seem to be configured for the Eastern teams, and other big cities like Chicago and Los Angeles. The other teams like the Rockies get their schedule seemingly as leftovers. This is why there are ridiculous things in the schedule, like playing 6 games in Arizona on two separate trips before playing 4 games total at home. Or playing 30 of 45 games on the road.

The one good thing I can say about this year's schedule is that they don't have any three time zone road trips like they had last year, and only one where they had to go to two time zones on one trip.

Regardless you still have to play 81 games at home and 81 games on the road over the course of a season, so any one sided glitches in one point of the season will allow you to have a huge favorable schedule later.

The fact that the Rockies have a winning record on the road this year, has raised my optimism for the rest of the season.

As of today, the Rockies have played 105 Games, 57 on the Road and 48 at home. By Thursday they will be 2/3rds of the way through the season with 21 remaining Away games, and 33 remaining at home.

The best news is that the Rockies are currently 58-47 and only need to go 32-25 to reach 90 wins, which usually is good enough to gain the Wild Card entry. To simplify this, all they need to do is win 1 game on the road for each loss at home to get to 90 wins.

Nothing is ever certain, but looking at it that way looks a lot easier than it did when they were 20-32 and needed to go 70-40 to accomplish 90 wins, doesn't it?