Balanced Schedule — Baseball Bench Coach

Every team at every level has a rival. I fondly recall the first game managing my daughter’s softball team. We lost 7-6 to a team that we would battle for first place for the next four years. We marked those games on our schedule every season (at least I did). As baseball navigates through the new rules in this first month of the 2023 MLB season, one change that has not garnered much attention is the new balanced schedule. Gone are the days that each team will face divisional opponents 18-19 times a season while meeting some teams in the other league once every three years. Under the new schedule, every MLB team will face off against all 29 other teams at some point in the season. This change adds some needed novelty to the schedule and certainly a touch of fairness to which teams get into the playoffs. One result though is that there aren’t as many rivalry games to be marked on the calendar.

For me, the history of MLB scheduling starts with the early 1960s – two leagues (AL and NL) and no interleague games. The World Series was just that, a time that the AL and NL pennant winners would face each other for the first time in the season. In 1969 MLB introduced divisional play, two divisional winners playing in league championship series with the winners meeting up in the Series. The first MLB regular season interleague games did not take place until 1997. For the next fifteen years, interleague play consisted of one division in each league playing a division in the other league.

Up until 2012, baseball attempted to keep interleague play from deciding pennant races. All interleague games were played prior to the All-Star Game. What happened though is that interleague play reduced the number of games played by each team against non-divisional league opponents. Indeed, each team was playing between 16 to 20 games annually against each divisional opponent, making up nearly half of each team’s regular season calendar. As the playoff format introduced additional wild card entrants in each league, the better teams in divisions that were top-heavy had a greater chance in making the playoffs since they could beat up on the also rans. Something had to change.

Enter the 2023 balanced schedule. The new schedule reduces the number of games against division rivals to 13, totaling 52 games; adds more same league games, given that each team will play six games against six opponents and seven games against four opponents in the same league, a total of 64; and 46 interleague games. It’s the same 162, except spread out more evenly. The playoff impact, of course, is that strength of schedule within one team’s division becomes less of a factor. As MLB chief operations and strategy officer Chris Marinak noted: “This new format creates more consistent opponent matchups as clubs compete for Postseason berths, particularly in the recently expanded wild card round.”

The biggest change is the number of interleague games, where teams go from 20 annually to 46. And just like all of the other new rules in 2023, the spirit of the balanced schedule is to make the game more fan-friendly. Marinak emphasized: “This fan-friendly format provides fans with the opportunity to see more opponent matchups with a particular focus on dramatically expanding our most exciting Interleague matchups.” Natural interleague rivals, such as the Angels-Dodgers, Guardians-Reds, Yankees-Mets, and White Sox-Cubs, will include home and away two-game series, while the other interleague games (42) will be three-game series at the respective teams’ home ballparks on alternating seasons.

Is there any downside to the new schedule? One concern is that the long-time rivalries will be reduced from 19 games to 13. The Chicago vs. St. Louis NL rivalry is of course one of those. The rivalry goes all the way back to 1885 when the Cubs (then called the White Stockings) faced the Cardinals (known then as the Browns) in games played in Chicago, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati. While the Cubs hold a 1,259 – 1,209 advantage all-time, the Cardinals own more World Series championships (11 to 3). Some of my fondest memories of the rivalry include the 1984 “Sandbergh Game” where Ryne Sandbergh tied a Saturday afternoon national televised game twice in the late innings with home runs at Wrigley Field and the 1998 home run race won by Mark McGwire (70) over Sammy Sosa (66).

Another NL heated rivalry is the Giants vs. Dodgers, dating back to the days when both teams played in New York alongside the Yankees. When Walter O’Malley moved his Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles after the 1957 season, he was able to convince New York Giants owner Horace Stoneham to take his team to the West Coast as well. The all-time series is divided by the two Coasts, the Giants winning 721-670 while the teams were in New York, and the Dodgers leading the series 592-552 since 1958. One of the most historic plays in baseball history happened in 1951, when Bobby Thomson hit the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” with a ninth-inning homer in the third and deciding NL pennant playoff.

And then there’s the AL rivalry of the Yankees vs. Red Sox, games that we’ve witnessed ad nauseum on national television throughout the last few decades. That rivalry began in 1919 when Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees. The Yankees went on to become the most storied team in MLB history, while Boston suffered through 86 years of failing to win the World Series due to the “Curse of the Bambino”. The Red Sox rebounded most recently, especially in 2004, when they came back from an 0-3 deficit in the ALCS and defeated the New Yorkers. I won’t miss the 19 games annually of this rivalry, but I’m sure the national networks will.

The balanced schedule is about seeing the star players of all of the 30 MLB teams. How fun it will be to see Shohei Ohtani face the Cubs every year! Ohtani’s last two seasons in particular are just remarkable. In 2021, in an AL MVP performance, he became the first player in MLB history with 10+ home runs and 20+ stolen bases as a hitter, and 100+ strikeouts and 10+ pitching appearances in a season. Last year he became the first player in the modern era to qualify for both the hitting and pitching leaderboards, an unbelievable 586 at-bats and 166 innings pitched. What will 2023 bring? A balanced schedule and a lot more Ohtani for everyone in baseball to enjoy.

Until next Monday,

your Baseball Bench Coach