Quote:
Originally posted by gmo
No need to spend much time, but you could give me some quick suggestions on how I might attack it. Ten teams, 154 games... Balance may not be critical but my inclination would be to go for 77 home & 77 away, which would break down to 8-9 home & away against each of the other nine teams. Thus perfect balance could not be achieved, and 8-9 games total vs or at a team does not lend itself well to 6 or 7 game weeklong series. Maybe Hank Greenberg could be more specific in his request about what exactly he'd like?
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In many of the PCL schedules, there was little attempt to balance the home/away splits against individual opponents, and often not even as a whole for the season. The week-long series format was strictly adhered to, though later on some half-week series were thrown it to try and balance things out a little more.
If it were a 162 game schedule, then the 18 matchups against each opponent could be split into three 6-game series, meaning most home/away splits would be either 12-6 or 6-12 (and could be alternated each year), with perhaps one team being split 9-9 using half-week series to keep the overall home/away split equal. Dropping to 154 games though, as you noted, doesn't work out very well.
So, I'd say you're right, Hank should check back in and clarify just what he'd like to see.
In any case, to work out the schedule for a 10 team league, regardless of the particular style, split the 10 teams into geographical groups. Here's what the NL did for 1965:
New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh were the east group; Cincinnati, Milwaukee, and St. Louis were the central group; Houston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco were the west group; and Chicago was the swing team.
One 3 team group would play all the teams in another 3 team group, yielding a total of 3 series. The swing team joins the remaining group of 3 teams, making a 4 team group who play amongst themselves, which also works out to 3 series played since there are 3 other opponents. After this, a 3 team group plays a different 3 team group, with the swing team joining whatever 3 team group is left over. Following this system, it makes it really easy to set up the schedule for the 10 teams, as it always breaks down into blocks consisting of 3 series.
So, for example, when the west group plays the east group, the swing team joins the central group. After that, the west group could play the central group, with the swing team then joining the east group. Finally, the central and east groups could play each other, with the swing team joining the west group. After these games are concluded, each team has now played one series against each of the other 9 opponents in the league.
This method also has the advantage of making the road trips look reasonable, since it takes into account the relative geographical structure of the league.
If I ever do a 10 team league schedule, this is the method I'm going to use...