Braves Report

As the season begins, it becomes time to wonder about the schedule. Who do we play? When? When I begin to ask these questions, I often ask myself about the unbalanced schedule. Under this form of the schedule, the team would play each of its division opponents 18 to 19 times a year while they play teams from the other divisions 6-9 times a year. In the Braves’ case, they play the Mets, Phillies, Nationals, and Marlins 18 times and then play teams like the D-Backs, Cardinals, Cubs, Padres, and Rockies 6-9 times with 6 being most common. Then, the rest of the games are split up into a few series for inter-league games against one division of the AL. My question now becomes if the unbalanced schedule is a good idea. I’ll give you both sides of the argument, and then, because I despise the unbalanced schedule, I’ll give some other options. As always while reading, make your own judgments on how you feel.

As it stands now we play:

Washington- 17 times
New York- 18 times
Philadelphia- 18 times
Florida- 16 times
Total- 69 games

Pittsburgh- 7 times
Colorado- 7 times
Los Angeles Dodgers- 6 times
Cincinnati- 6 times
San Diego- 6 times
Oakland- 3 times
Arizona- 8 times
Milwaukee- 9 times
Chicago Cubs- 6 times
Los Angeles Angels- 3 times
Texas- 3 times
Seattle- 3 times
Toronto- 3 times
Houston- 6 times
San Diego- 3 times
St. Louis- 7 times
San Francisco- 7 times
Total- 93 games (69 + 93 = 162)

For: Each team gets to control their destiny. If you’re going to play anyone the most, it might as well be the teams from your own division. When competing against them, one person will lose and the other will win. A game in the standings will be won or lost. Other nights, if you win, the other teams may win as well, and no ground can be made up. When playing against each other, you can make up ground by beating the other team. Also, playing teams in your own division helps teams intensify rivalries already created by being supposedly close geographically. It’s more fun to cheer against your rivals. I like kicking the Mets’ collective ass every time, and the more we can do it, the better. In terms of travel, there’s only one crummy trip all the way across the country.

Against: Honestly, who likes playing the Marlins 16 times? Hell, the Marlins don’t want to be themselves 16 times. Even against the Mets and Phillies, things get boring. I’m tired of seeing them come in every other weekend. I’d rather get more glimpses of the Padres or the other AL teams that we play once every four years. Why not spread everything out? If you want to jam in the division games at the end, that’s fine. It’s more exciting that way. Also, teams now start complaining about their division and losing out in the wild card race because their division is too hard. There are better ways to schedule than giving us an inordinate amount of games against our division opponents (seriously, we play them 3 times as much as other teams), so here are some of my ideas:

League equality: Give everyone the same amount of games against everyone else. In the NL, that means that each team will play each other roughly 11 times (162 / 15 = 10.8), so each team will have 3 teams they only play 10 times (15 * 10 = 150, 162 – 150 = 12). In the AL, teams play each other 12 (162 / 13 = 12.5) with six games left over. Now, no one can say they had a tougher schedule than anyone else, and the three or six teams you don’t play are negligible as a difference due to games you should have (not) won. However, this means that inter-league play ends all together (which to some people isn’t a bad thing).

Play all AL teams, too: In the NL, this means that we need 27 more games (we play 5 teams already and we’re giving 3 games for each series to make it fair), and if we take all of our division opponents down to 10 games (it’s still a little unbalanced, but not nearly as much; this way, we keep our ability to “control our destiny”), that gives us 29 free games. The other two games can be tacked onto the series with San Diego. In the AL, we need around 33 games, so that will need some more maneuvering, but using the Braves’ schedule, it would be like taking a series away from Milwaukee and a game away from Arizona. This way every two years, fans get to see all the players and players get to play in all the parks.

Full-out equality: How cool would this be? Each team plays the others five times each (29 * 5 = 145), which leaves 17 games to be split up with teams in your own league. This might even out the competitive balance between the leagues as each team would have to plan their rosters accordingly (i.e. NL teams need a better bat to come off the bench, AL teams need their big DH’s to play defense). However, this would kill most rivalries (Who’s tired of seeing Red Sox-Yankees games every week?). Now, we know who the best team is in the entire MLB.

League equality and all AL teams: Okay, this gets interesting. We need 42 games for all the AL teams (14 * 3), which leaves 120. Divide 120 by 15, and you get 8 exactly for each NL team. In the AL, we need 48 games (16 * 3), which leaves 114 games. Divide 114 by 13, and you get 8.8 games per team. 8 * 13 gets us to 104 which means 10 opponents get an extra game in the series, and it leaves us with a negligible 3 game difference in strength of schedule. This way, the AL teams still come, and strength of schedule stays the same across the board. Now, after a season, we really know who the best team is in each league.

These are just some suggestions. Honestly, I like the League Equality with all AL teams because it works out neatly. I really hope I did all the math right (remember, you can’t play against yourself- don’t divide 162 by 16 to get league equality), but you never know. If you have other suggestions, let me know. I just wanted to let off some steam about an issue that really bugs me.