Baseball Musings: Schedule Makers

October 10, 2005

Schedule Makers

Matt Thompson writes:

What is the reasoning behind MLB not delaying Game 1 of the ALCS one day. It seems that the White Sox gain a considerable advantage over the other ALDS winner due to a rain out, not a "baseball" reason...like playing 18 innings in one day. If the argument is that Fox has the broadcast rights, and they refuse to reschedule for the benefit of their programing/ratings, then MLB has greater issues than I thought. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

There are a number of issues at work here.

Fox is paying a ton of money to major league baseball. They expect a game on Tuesday night. If baseball wants more control of when games are played, they are going to get less money. That means the owner and the players all get less money. They'll lose sleep over that.
These games are covered by tons of other media. They've made hotel reservations, flight reservations, etc. Changing plans costs all these people money.
The World Series is scheduled to start in the AL city. If the ALCS is on schedule, everyone has at worst two days lead time to set up for game 1. If you push the series end to Thursday, you cut that to one day. And if game 6 or 7 is rained out, you're scrambling. Baseball is trying to avoid that.

I was listening to WFAN today as I drove my dad home today, and they were discussing something else I didn't know. There's a union rule forbidding playing 3 consecutive games in different time zones. The union, however, waived that rule in this situation.

One of the reasons this is happening, by the way, is that clubs with higher seeds demanded a change to the first round. Five game playoffs used to be 2-3, with the higher seed getting the last 3 games at home. But too often, the higher seed was losing the first two games on the road and ended up being swept. As the higher seed, they felt they should get two home games, so now you have the ridiculous schedule where you may need to fly across the country to play a game five. It just goes to show that there are unintended consequences to decisions that appear beneficial on the surface.

And quite frankly, I don't have a lot of sympathy for either team. These are guys who play night games, party into the wee hours of the morning, get a few hours sleep and then come back to the ballpark. They're flying chartered jets where there is room to stretch out and sleep. I would suspect after playing baseball for over seven months straight they can afford to miss batting practice.

Whoever wins tonight is going to be happy to be playing tomorrow, no matter how tired they feel. They can sleep on Thursday.

Posted by David Pinto at 05:25 PM | League Championship Series | TrackBack (0)

Comments

Also, you'd lose the staggering of the two LCSes. With the staggered starts, in the event of two 7-game series, you'd have at least one baseball game every day from Tuesday through the 20th, but the neat thing about the staggered 2-3-2 scheduling is that you get 6 weekdays with one game in prime time (which is ideal), 2 weekend days with two games (also ideal), and only 2 of the non-ideal two-game weekdays. 10 days, 80% of them with ideal scheduling. If the ALCS and NLCS are on the same schedule, you have 2 weekend days with two games (ideal), 5 weekdays with two games (non-ideal), and 3 weekdays with no games that would otherwise have games (non-ideal). So over 10 days, 20% ideal scheduling. Each weekday, you'd be squeezing in one game either into a late or an early timeslot, which not only doesn't make it easier for Fox, who's paying baseball a lot of money, but it doesn't make it easy for the fans, either, who have to squeeze in two games on some weekdays and sit around and wait on others. So basically it kinda sucks to be flying all around the country, but that's the breaks.

Posted by: Adam Villani at October 10, 2005 06:39 PM

Thanks for the info. I guess I just feel it shouldn't be about the TV contract, or the prime time slots for ratings, or the convenience of media coverage. It should be about the game. I, and people like me, are going the watch the games regardless of when they are on (even 8pm starts in San Diego!). Reporters are going to cover it, TV and radio are going to air it. Fox paid for the rights to broadcast the game, and under normal circumstances MLB should do all that is possible to meet their requests. However, when the integrity of the game is at stake MLB (or the players' union) should step in and use some common sense. If Fox, or whatever network has broadcast rights, is unhappy with that situation then they should alter their bid next time or graciously decline the opportunity. Just don't let decisions made to appease the pocket books of the uber rich affect the quality of ball I, the consumer, get to watch.

Posted by: Matt Thompson at October 10, 2005 06:58 PM

I think the operative thing here is that while it sounds crass to put things in terms of better ratings, what those ratings mean are that more people are watching the games. Or to put it another way, that more people are *able* to watch the game. Some people may have flexible enough schedules, but everybody has a different threshold.

Remember that there's four time zones just within the continental US, too. Those games that start at 5 PM on the west coast and 8 PM on the east coast are really the only ones that accessible for everybody (outside of Hawaii and Alaska, that is.) Any other time slot and you're either too early for the west coast or too late for the east coast.

Posted by: Adam Villani at October 10, 2005 07:51 PM

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