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Originally Posted by gmo
The one impression in this area that I had formed over time is that there are a relatively high proportion of offdays very early in the season, i.e., more an average early than across the season as a whole.
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I had gotten that impression too, but I never paused to ask why. Or, to verify whether that impression was true.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gmo
My first explanation for myself there was that it was to allow players to more ease into the season. Could also be to make it easier to more immediately make up games - if teams playing an April Mon-Wed series are both off that Thu, then a rainout (or snowout) could potentially be made up right away. Or it might not even be so much for makeups but just because April may be the worst weather month of the regular season so avoid scheduling as many games then.
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Yeah, that's a good point. More scheduled offdays could very well be because of the less than ideal weather in April, and those other reasons.
Looking through OOTP's settings the other day, I was reminded of the early season expanded rosters. IIRC, that was introduced due to covid and only for 1 season. But it did make me wonder, should April have more offdays? And the thing that immediately came to mind was that April seems to have more players out due to injury than other months (not in shape coming off the off-season, coming back from injuries, playing hard to make a roster, who knows). I can't remember it exactly, but I seem to remember once watching a video essay (by Brian Kenny maybe?) breaking down the # of games missed by players due to injury by month. If anyone knows where we can find this data, I'd be really interested in looking at it from a schedule creator's viewpoint. Maybe there is a good reason for April to have more offdays.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gmo
The typical current MLB-like 162 games has 14 full weeks pre-All-Star and 11 full weeks post-All-Star. Six 4-game series (and thus six no-offday weeks) fill out the schedule. Now I would probably aim to average 3 of those on each side of the All-Star Break. Since the first half is longer than the second, that means offdays are slightly more common in the first half. I can try to make a point to lean more toward having a median at 4 of those pre-ASG and 2 of them post-ASG, which would slightly lean the offdays to being more common in the second half.
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I've been meaning to re-do my schedules with some 4-game series, but that's a big project (at least for me it is) and I was kind of stumped over the best way to go about it. And by your post I think you just helped me wrap my head around it! I'm not sure what exactly I was stumped by (how many to have, where to put them, what type of opponent to give them to, keep the Mon-Thurs and Fri-Sun windows or overlap them some), but reading your thoughts made me look at the Jays schedule (I typically like to come up with my own solutions in the hopes of maybe coming up with something better, but if something isn't coming to you it's probably best to look at how others do things) and I noticed they have had 1 against the Royals in April, 3 (!) in May (vs the Red Sox, Yankees, and Rays), 1 vs the Astros in June, none in July (no surprise, the ASB can be tricky to schedule around), 1 in August vs the Guardians, and only 1 in September vs the Rangers, starting today actually.
So, 3 intra-divisional 4-game matchups and 3 inter, no interleague. Also, 4 before the break, like you were thinking. That all sounds good. The key thing, for me at least, is to see that not once did they break from their Mon-Thurs and Fri-Sun windows. I also just checked the Yankees and they break those windows right off the bat with 2 of their 4-game series starting on Thursdays in April this year (it looks like 3, but 1 included a makeup game). Then another 1 of 2 in May, 0 of 1 in July (5 before the ASB), 1 of 2 in August, and 0 of 1 in September (4 of 8 start on a Thursday). So I was correct, MLB does break those windows, but I don't think I should feel like I should try to too. If keeping them unbroken is easier, just go with it. Same thing with the # of 4-game series, they don't all have the same #, but I don't think I necessarily need to aim for that level of detail. Simply integrating some set # of 4-game match-ups would be a realistic improvement. Thanks!
I'm sure you understand what I'm getting at, but if someone new to schedule creating is reading this and asks, "what's so difficult about breaking these windows?". Well, the problem is if the Yankees are starting their next series against the Orioles on a Thursday then you have to also make sure that the Orioles don't also end their previous series on a Thursday. And if you have these set windows (that early and late week series are played in), then it's pretty easy to slot and move matchups around. But if the series are split over the 2 windows, then it can get rather complicated fast.