Mike's 2004 MLB Schedule

This is what the Major League Schedule would look like in the perfect world. In making this schedule, I made some assumptions:

• The leagues are 15-15. This has to happen. Right now, with 16-14, the schedule is automatically flawed because some NL teams play more interleague games than others. This can't continue.
• Montreal ends up moving to Portland. This, along with getting the leagues 15-15, necessitate some movement. Portland moves to the NL West, Colorado to the NL Central and Pittsburgh to the NL East. Houston moves to the AL West. This will allow Texas to no longer be the only team in their division two time zones away from their mates. Now at least there's two.
• The current MLB schedule is geared towards playing 52 series. You multiply that by 3 to get 156 games, and add 6 random games to get it to be 162. This is basically done because every time the schedule makers have tried to make the schedule fair by having shorter series, the MLPBA would scream holy heck (i.e.: the original interleague year, which increased the number of series to 56). They currently do it this way:
  • The AL East and AL Central play 6 interleague series, 6 series against each team in their division (24), 2 series against each team outside their division (20). To make up for the missing two series, two intraleague opponents are added. The extra 6 games are split with four of those games coming against your division rivals and the other 2 against another league team.
  • The AL West teams play 6 interleague series, 7 or 8 series against each team in their division (22), 2 series against 6 intraleague opponents (12), 3 series against 4 intraleague opponents (12). The extra 6 games are split like the other AL divisions, 4 against division rivals and 2 against intraleague rivals. So, in the AL Central, there's an uneven amount of divisional games.
  • The NL East and NL West play either 5 or 6 interleague series, 6 series against each team in their division (24), 2 series against each team outside their division (22) and one extra series against another league team if they only have 5 interleague series. The extra six games are spread 4 in division, 2 out of division (but not against the Central).
  • The NL Central play either 4, 5 or 6 interleague series, 5 or 6 series against divisional rivals (26), 2 series against each team outside their division (20) with one or two extra series to make up the interleague shortfall. The extra games are all within the division, so you play one of your rivals 16 times and the other four 17 times.
• This schedule works the same for all 6 divisions: 6 interleague series, 30 intraleague series (3 against each team) and 16 intradivisional series (4 against each team). This knocks the divisional count down from anywhere between 16 and 20 games down to 13, and knocking the league count up to either nine (for 8 opponents) or ten (for 2 others). The home/away for intraleague does not balance by team, but it currently doesn't either, so I can get this one. Like the real MLB schedule, each team gets 13 Friday/Saturday/Sunday dates.
• Since it's 15-15, there has to always be an interleague series. It was set up so the big rivalry games still occur on weekends in the middle of the season, and the lesser series on the fringes. This also allows so that all the big rivalry games (Mets-Yankees, Dodgers-Angels, Giants-A's, Cubs-White Sox) are not played concurrently. The first interleague series is San Francisco visiting Texas (ironically, the first ever interleague game) and finishes up with three: Toronto-Pittsburgh, Detroit-Colorado and Texas-San Diego. Hardly earth shattering, playoff-deciding series.

How to read the schedule:

• Each team is represented by a single letter. That letter is listed in parentheses under to the team's header. For example, the New York Yankees are "N". All of the A.L. teams are in uppercase, all of the N.L. teams in lowercase.
• Games in red are road games. Games in black are home games.
• Games in italics are divisional series.
• The weeks obviously start on Sunday and end on Saturday. The blanks are off-days.
• LHS=Longest Home Stand, LRT=Longest Road Trip. The AL ones are pretty reasonable, there's a few in the NL that probably can't happen: a 19-game home stand by San Diego and a 19-game road trip by St. Louis. Although they occur roughly at the same time, they didn't play each other during their stands to make something easy to flip. I'm not sure on the union-mandated limit of a road trip, I know the most consecutive days without an off-day is 20, which practically every team hits.