The 2020 season officially starts on Friday, July 24th down in Houston. LET’S GO!!!
Fittingly, we kick things off with 20 games in 20 days. Then an off-day, then 10 more games, another off-day, followed by 16 more games. For those doing the math, that’s 46 games in the first 48 days, which means for NO REASON WHATSOEVER, the Mariners have four days off in the last two and a half weeks. Immediately following that initial 46-game blitzkrieg, we have an off-day, a 3-game series, an off-day, a 2-game series, ANOTHER off-day (smack dab in the middle of a homestand, no less), six more games, one more off-day, and a final 3-game set on the road to close out the season.
Why can’t baseball just be normal? Why can’t we have normal schedules, uniformly, across the entire league? There are six off-days built into this 60-game season; there’s a simple solution here. Play two weeks straight, then have an off-day once a week – the same day, every week – and finally wrap up the season with another two weeks’ worth of games. I mean, it’s not rocket science! Some dummy with a laptop just cracked the code!
An interesting wrinkle to how this season shakes out is the fact that we play every team in our division ten times. You might think – in an attempt to be fair, and maybe to cut down on travel – they would institute 5-game series for each of these. Instead, we’re stuck with the usual 3-game or 4-game sets, which leads to an imbalance. Here’s he breakdown among our A.L. West opponents:
- Astros: 7 road games, 3 home games
- Angels: 7 road games, 3 home games
- Athletics: 3 road games, 7 home games
- Rangers: 3 road games, 7 home games
I mean, forgetting for a moment that 5-game series make the most sense in this scenario, but why aren’t the two road trips to Houston and Anaheim – for instance – both 3-game sets (with the lone homestand a 4-gamer)? It boggles the mind!
To break up the monotony, we get to play 20 games against the N.L. West, under the usual routine of 2-game and 3-game series. Here’s the breakdown, for funsies:
- Rockies: 3 home games
- Dodgers: 2 road games, 2 home games
- Padres: 3 road games, 3 home games
- Giants: 2 road games, 2 home games
- Diamondbacks: 3 road games
I don’t really have much to say about this part, other than it’s unfortunate we get saddled with the Dodgers for a fourth game, since they’re a terrific team. But, what can you do?
July is a road game-heavy eight days, obviously. August is split pretty evenly between the road and home. Which makes September not only our most restful month, but severely home game-heavy. This might be an ideal schedule for a great team looking to do great things in the playoffs, but for an inexperienced/bad team like the Mariners, it just seems to be needlessly cruel. We’ll get chewed apart over the first month of the season, and spend the last month languishing in last place, with lots of extra time to sit around and dwell on how we’re so terrible.
But, on the bright side, we’ve got baseball! Finally! I’m going to be counting down the days these next three weeks until an actual live sporting event I give a care about returns to my television screen! Things are looking up, even though *checks calendar* it’s after the 4th of July and we’re still wallowing in perpetually gloomy weather. WHAT GIVES?!
WE HAD A DEAL, SEATTLE! YOU SUCK THROUGH JUNE AND COME JULY 5TH YOU GIVE US WHAT WE NEED!
That’s it, I’m writing my congressman. This aggression will not stand.