[jmknpk2]

Ok. I know this is something I could probably figure out myself if I spent some time, but I know there are those of you out there who already understand the process. So I ask for help.

I am trying to have a balanced schedule. What I envisioned was playing two five game series against each division opponent, with one day off between series. I have twelve teams in the division.

So, I went about creating my schedule file. I rotated opponents as I went, scheduling five days on and one day off for all teams in the league (all teams had the same day off). But then I got down to the last few series of the first half.

Now I have groups of three teams that need to play each of the other two teams in the group. I come to realize that I need to have one team sit out a series while the other two play each other. Not only that, but because during the series slot when one of the teams is sitting out, another team is playing twice, that still needs to sit out. This means I need to tack on an additional buy week. So I think I could schedule five series time-frame slots, with some teams having a buy in one of the slots, while other teams have a buy in a different slot. I think I would be able to finish out the season (with the three remaining match-ups played out) this way. But since these are five-day series with an off day buffer, teams are sitting out for 6 days. This is something I really don't want.

So I realize that I need to do something more like a normal MLB schedule where a few teams have an off day while other teams are playing which gradually over the course of the season allows the teams to finish out all their 3 day series against each other. But I don't know how to plan that out.

So that brings me to my question. How do I taper out the off days so that over the course of the season teams have no more than one off day at a time, yet complete their five game series against all opponents? Is there a system to spreading the off days out to come up with a decent schedule? How do I decide how many teams to schedule on each off day? Do I need to schedule some series with less than 5 games to get things to balance?