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Of course any given particular situation could keep from having that choice, and it reminds me of the question of preference for 3-day weekend Fri-Sun or Sat-Mon if you have the classic Mon-Fri work week. In my head I say I prefer to look forward to the offday for the full week, then come back from offday to a short week, so Sat-Mon.
In this case I think I would also go with before the road series to use "free" time to pad around traveling away.
For this exact situation and with the ability to slide the middle series either way, in making a schedule this would be a open choice. It would probably come down to which way would provide more balance between the number of games played league-wide on those two potential offdays.
When it comes to multi-series homestands, along these lines one of my guidelines is minimizing the number of offdays within the homestand to make the theoretical travel schedule more relaxed. In an example of an away series, *two* home series, then away series, then where there is a choice I would make a point to put any offday between the first away series and first home series or between the second home series and the second away series rather than between the home series.
It would be interesting to see a player survey covering the original question and the within-homestand offdays case. Opinions probably span the whole range. For the original I have no idea. For the within-homestand question, stereotyping a bit, I can imagine older guys with families preferring tighter travel schedule to give more time off at home and younger guys liking more cases with an offday for travel that allows for an evening free in the new town before game tomorrow.
Sorry to go on further in different directions, but using the gametimes is something else I have moved toward doing for sort of maximizing time for travel. After offdays are already settled, if there is a situation where both teams (or potentially even just one team) play somewhere else tomorrow, make their game against each other today in the afternoon. I think that is more done in real MLB than my minimize offdays within homestands.
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