Rarely playing a game
ByIt’s a sunny day out in New York City. After last night’s deluge, the sky is perfectly blue, and the mercury is hovering around 63. It is the perfect day for a Sunday afternoon baseball game. Yet, because of the demands of television, we have to wait. We have to wait until 8:20 p.m. when temperatures will be in the low 50s. The ninth inning should arrive sometime around midnight with a chill in the air.
By now, the Yankees and the Angels must be used to this. The two teams have been playing in extremes — cold and rainy New York, warm and sunny Anaheim. The weather is, of course, just one aspect of postseason baseball. By the time mid-October arrives in the Northeast, it could be chilly and damp or it could be warm and sunny.
Baseball can’t control the weather, but they can control the calendar. It’s time to start rethinking the playoff schedule. When the Yankees and Angels take the field this evening, it will be just the ninth time in 21 days that these two teams play baseball. The Yanks have played games on back-to-back days twice since the regular season ended.
Today, The Times tackles this lack of baseball. The Angels’ manager doesn’t think too highly of this approach to scheduling. “Ridiculous,” Scioscia said. “I don’t know. Can I say it any clearer than that? We should have never had a day off last Wednesday. We should never have three days off after the season. You shouldn’t even have two days off after the season.”
In another piece, Joshua Robinson explores baseball’s reactions and excuses and examines why the World Series is going to end in November. My favorite quotation in that second article comes from Katy Feeney, baseball’s V.P. of scheduling. “If somebody can tell us which week in April or which week in November would be best, we’d be happy to schedule around those, but nobody seems able to quite do that yet,” Feeney said. “Weather people seem to be the only people that can keep their jobs and be wrong most of the time.”
That’s right; a Major League Baseball executive is blaming the meteorologists for baseball’s elongated October scheduling. The reality is much simpler. Baseball is being held hostage to its television deals. Because the networks pay billions of dollars for the TV rights, they want to maximize prime time coverage. Gone are the days when two games are on at once, and mostly gone are the days when two games are played on the same calendar day. With a crazy 2-2-1-2 format for the league championship series, FOX and TBS ensure that most days just feature one baseball game.
For the players, this change is tough. Starters are used to playing 162 games in around 190 days. They play every day every month for six months. And when October arrives, they play now and then.
For the fans, the stop-and-go pace of the postseason is excruciating. Fixing it, though, is easy. Baseball needs to assert a variable schedule about the Division Series. They should ensure that, outside of travel days, the unnecessary off days should be eliminated. The Yanks don’t need to take a day off in New York after Game 1 of the ALDS, and the Angels and Yanks didn’t need to sit around Anaheim on Wednesday while not playing.
Baseball should also start the League Championship Series sooner if the teams are ready. The Angels and Yanks wrapped up their division series on Sunday and didn’t play until Thursday. It would be easy for those two teams to play on Tuesday, and fans would manage.
In the end, this is about the money. Baseball fans wait as baseball and TV executives see the dollars flow in. At some point, it should change. It’s better for the game to let October play out smoothly instead of this as a stop-and-start postseason we are witnessing this year.
Agreed with all of this. These off-years (or so it seems to me) get really annoying.
I titally agree.
In addition, start the regular season a week to ten days earlier. Reduce the chance of cold and/or stormy weather for northern teams by scheduling them in the south, the west and in domed stadiums. I don’t think anyone will care if that pushes back opening day for northern teams.
That I agree with. Plus: Stop the WBC bullshit. While it is a fun event, it pushes back poening day and the WS to November.
titally. ha.
Bob, the mistake you’re making is assuming that there’s anyone intelligent in the baseball front offices. You expect these people to understand logic and reasoning? Shame on you for making such an assumption.
Apologies for not using the Reply button. I know some people here get testy about it.
THIN ICE CUBAN C
GRRRR
It’s not that they’re not intelligent, it’s that they have a different set of priorities than the people who want ballgames to be played in the best conditions: they want to make as much money as possible. That means allowing the TV networks to dictate the scheduling. Who cares if the games are played in 40 degree, rainy weather, delayed until 9:30? The network could sell ads at a higher price, which means they paid MLB a bigger cut.
I don’t understand MLB’s need to have set in stone start dates for each round. Why not have a flexible schedule where each series will have a max of 2 days off between the end of the previous round. The ALCS started 5 days later after the ALDS even though both teams clinched on the same day. The NBA does it all the time where you can watch game 1 of the 2nd round on the same day as game 7 of a 1st round series. If both LCS ended in sweeps then there would have been no games for 8 days. I know you can’t predict the weather but if they got rid of these unnecessary off days like in between game 4 and 5 in the same city then they can prevent the games from being played deeper in the year.
I also think baseball needs to be considerate of fans who work. Having playoff games start at 4 pm ET (1 pm PT) on a weekday is a complete diss to working people and even students. Are you supposed to take the day off or leave work early to watch the game?
I understand that they don’t want to have both the NLCS and ALCS on at the same time to compete with each other for ratings, but they’re just going to have to let go of that if they want working people to watch. Not everyone has a boss that’s going to set up a TV in the breakroom and invite workers to stop what they’re doing and watch.
wait…so, they shouldn’t play the games when the weather is better?
I do not think they should play the games during business hours on a weekday. On weekends, by all means play them during the afternoon.
I agree with everyone else that the non-travel off-days are awful.
Isn’t the whole reason the schedule is pushed back this year because of the WBC? That’s pretty much 100% MLB’s fault.
that’s why we are going into November, but that’s not why the Yankees have played nine times in twenty one days after tonight
Well that part happens because of TV contracts and MLB probably can’t do anything about it.
Not to mention the baseball’s short-term thinking about building a fan base.
I mean, okay screw the fans, screw the players, but who gets screwed when kids don’t grow up watching the game? Well, some other baseball owners somewhere down the line. Who cares, this is the One True Green Folding God we’re talking about.
“This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.”
/Douglas Adams’d
I have to think that baseball chose to air game 6 on Sunday night rather than Sunday afternoon to avoid competition with NFL games, which is preposterous.
Um, the NFL plays Sunday night also. So the Yanks will be going up against the Giants – Cardinals tonight.
Horrible decision by MLB.
Um, they don’t have a choice, given Fox’s NFL obligations.
Sure they do. They’re only obligated to televise the local market games. So the Yanks could have been telecast nationally on FOX, except in those markets where the local team was playing. In those markets, they could have put the Yanks on TBS or the local affiliate.
Im already semi-drunk after 1 oclock games, what can I do to assure a Yankee victory ?
My advice to you is to continue drinking heavily.
that was the plan “the Frank” but im not sure i still got the stamina
Here’s my solution, just take Fox out of the equation. Fox is the evil of the sports world.
In response to starting the games earlier, it’s not going to happen with West Coast v East Coast games. I’m from CT, but live in CA right now (I’m obviously a huge Yankees fan and want to see all the Angels fans crying tomorrow morning), and you’ve got to keep in mind people out here (Angels and Dodgers fans) want to see the games. They’re inconvenient for us as well because they start before most people get off of work. If you live in the LA area, you don’t get home until the 4th or 5th inning because of traffic. Although, we don’t have to stay up really late to see the end…
There really isn’t a solution to the starting time… 8pm works great for bi-costal games. BUT, if Fox didn’t have control of the MLB playoffs, and say ESPN did, the games would probably be a lot more flexible and have shorter commercial breaks. ESPN doesn’t have to schedule around multi-million dollar programming. ESPN doesn’t have American Idol (starring Carl Pavano), the Fringe, House, 24, or whatever other mindnumbing shows Fox has on these days. The fact that Fox has control of the playoffs is just shameful. They don’t care about baseball. They talk about football during the broadcast. That’s just terrible.
I agree, look at TBS, they moved their programming around. You always saw commercials saying “Episodes of Tyler Perry will return after the playoffs”.
FOX, is brutal. If they want to have just the World Series, I’m cool with that, because even people with basic cable (any of ya left?) should be able to watch the World Series.
I think you guys are living in a dream world. The TV money’s driving everything. You want a friendlier schedule? Give up the TV money then the owners, Managers, and players can play for the love of the game, not the lucre.
Enjoy listening to the game on your transistor radio, maybe Gillette will sponsor part of the radio broadcast if we’re lucky because there won’t be any TV coverage unless Versus takes a plunge.
That’s why I put up with John Sterling’s incessant ad hawking. Without the ads there’d be no reason to broadcast the game.
I’d love to blame the WBC, but the playoffs are gonna be late again next season.
The season should end in Sept. and start 2 or 3 days after the last game (in case of play-in games).
Also, I only want off days for travel days.
It is FOX and I guess TBS now, that really fuck the schedule. The later you go into Oct, a lot of cities start getting cold.
I mean, what’s gonna happen when the Twins are in the ALCS and it’s snowing on Oct 20th for game 1 of the series?
Tom Cable, you can’t challenge a penalty, idiot.
This is on topic because it’s a ‘Rant’
Hahah yes, thank you sir.
damn clock,its going, t..i..c..k……t..o..c..k
instead of ,tick tock
lets goooo, move it clock
According to Baseball Prospectus’ Playoff Odds Report, the Angels win in Game 5 increased their chances of winning this series from 5.6% to 10.8%.
The Yanks chances obviously dropped by the same difference: they went from 94.4% to 89.2%.
I contacted BP Playoff Odds Guru Clay Davenport for comment. He mentioned that his program is currently assuming that Albert Pujols has been masquerading as Jeff Mathis.
If we remove that assumption, the Angels chances drop to -1.3%, and the Yankees jump to 101.3%, with a +/- 1.3% margin of error.
Stop hiding behind your spreadsheets!
This is the real world Joe D.!!!
But…but…it’s so bright and scary out here!
I remember in grade school seeing World Series games in the afternoon. That was great. I couldn’t have seen them if they started at 8:00 at night.
I think it’s ridiculous to have these games so late and with so many days off.
On 30 Rock one of the questions was “What sports does NBC broadcast anymore?”
Good question. Fox sucks at just about everything it does.