^^^See notes at bottom of post for fixes/updates/etc.
The attached zip includes 15 schedules that are variations on the 2019 MLB schedule. Their names have an "x" followed by 2 digits. The x11 is the (slightly tweaked - see note at bottom***) 2019 MLB schedule, and the others involve adjustments done to rotate the interleague matchups year-to-year.
If these 15 schedules are the only schedules in your Schedules OOTP folder,
I believe the game will cycle through the 15 of them across 15 years. Standard disclaimer - as always, I fully intend for things to work right, but I cannot guarantee it and depend on the user to implement.
The schedules allow for rotations across the interleague division matchups like this...
- The files named like "x#1" (e.g., x11, x21, etc) have the 2019 interleague matchups - AL East vs NL West, AL Central vs NL East, AL West vs NL Central
- The files named like "x#2" (e.g., x12, x22, etc) have interleague matchups - AL East vs NL Central, AL Central vs NL West, AL West vs NL East
- The files named like "x#3" (e.g., x13, x23, etc) have interleague matchups - AL East vs NL East, AL Central vs NL Central, AL West vs NL West
In those cases the teams in a division play each of the teams in their interleague matchup division in 3 or 4 games.
In the actual 2019 MLB here are 4 additional interleague games though, which are the "rivalry matchups" against teams from the corresponding interleague division:
- AL East vs NL East : BAL v WAS, BOS v PHI, NYY v NYM, TAM v MIA, TOR v ATL
- AL Central vs NL Central : CHW v CHC, CLE v CIN, DET v PIT, KC v STL, MIN, MIL
- AL West vs NL West : HOU v COL, LAA v LAD, OAK v SF, SEA v SD, TEX v ARI
However rather than trying to maintain those rivalry games, those slots rotated around the schedules through divisions just like the full divisional matchups. E.g., the "x12" has these "rivalry" interleague matchups...
- AL East vs NL West : BAL v SF, BOS v SD, NYY v LAD, TAM v COL, TOR v ARI
- AL Central vs NL East : CHW v ATL, CLE v MIA, DET v PHI, KC v WAS, MIN v NYM
- AL West vs NL Central : HOU v CIN, LAA v MIL, OAK v STL, SEA v PIT, TEX v CHC
The "x#3" schedules then have these as the extra interleague "rivalry" alignments - AL East vs NL Central, AL Central vs NL West, AL West vs NL East
The first digit in that section of the schedule name goes 1-5, and five versions involve cycling through how the teams exactly line up. E.g., for the "rivalry" extra interleague games BAL has those extra games against WAS in x11 (again, that is the real*** 2019 schedule), ATL in x21, MIA in x31, NYM in x41, and PHI in x51.
With that rotation across the 15 seasons there is a balance across the interleague matchups. The division matchups also balance. The interdivision games within the subleague do not numerically balance exactly because of the method of the rotation of teams through the schedules.
- division opponents: 19 games against each for 2019, 285 total for the 15 schedules
- interdivision opponents: 6-7 games against each for 2019, 90-105 total for the 15 schedules
- interleague opponents: 3-4 games against each that do play for 2019, 20 total for the 15 schedules
I made an effort to keep the gametimes sensible for the teams as they rotate through the schedule template. To do that I took the distribution of gametimes for each team in the actual 2019 schedule for each day of the week. Then in each variation schedule, when a team had a home game on a day of the week I gave that game a random gametime pulled from that 2019 distribution. E.g., team Z has a 2019 Wednesday distribution for game times of 2 of 12 at 1305, 3 of 12 at 1610, and 7 of 12 at 1935, then there is a 2 in 12 chance of any Wednesday game being at 1305, 3 in 12 chance of 1610, and 7 in 12 chance of 1935.
That gametime tweaking should maintain realism better, though not perfectly. It means that in every schedule CHC should have a relative lot of day home games and that east coast teams should not get night gametimes like a west coast team. But those distributions are for some days as they are because of travel considerations. A team randomly getting a Thursday afternoon gametime may not make much sense one of the variation schedules because the travel situation for the teams is not the same there as in the 2019 schedule that had that gametime to allow the teams to travel that night for games elsewhere the next day.
*** I did adjust the basis "raw" 2019 schedule to move the SEA@OAK Japan 2-game series to have those games no longer separately early and part of other SEA@OAK series during the season.
- Move Mar20 SEA@OAK game to Thu May23 at 22:07.
- Move Mar21 SEA@OAK game to Mon Jul15 at 22:07.
A couple more changes were made to satisfy other constraints, particularly not having too long without a team having an offday.
- Move May30 LAA@SEA to Wed Apr3 at 16:10.
- Move Apr4 SEA@CHW to same day but at 18:10.
^^^ Version "a" added to address a couple points in
post 4 in this thread.
- Fixed the time zone issue by putting all game times in local time.
- Moved NYY@BOS on Thu Jul25 to Fri Jun28 to avoid consecutive offdays.