For the first time that I am aware of in MLB history, the exhibition season began with games in late February when a few teams played Thursday February 29 in 1996. Most fans were probably not too bothered by this, after all this would be the beginning of what would be baseball’s first normal season since 1993. When the two division era was in place from 1969-1993, the regular season never began any earlier than April 2, 1984 and prior to 1982, the regular season was always 25 and a half weeks long, typically opening on the first or second Monday in April and ending the last Thursday of September or the first Thursday of October. If the season began on a Wednesday or Thursday, which it did on a few occasions, the final Sunday was usually the first Sunday of October, though I did find a September 29 finish in 1975. From 1982 to 2017, the season was exactly 26 weeks long with games scheduled over 25 and one half of those weeks. The original schedule in all years accept 2011 and 2012 began with opening games on Monday or Tuesday with the special single Sunday contest on the docket for most years from 1994 to 2015 and a trio of such games in 2016 and 2017. A special Wednesday opener was held prior to the league wide opening on Thursday April 5 in 2012, no such game was played prior to the Thursday March 31, 2011 openers.

With yet more additional off days starting with the regularly arranged 2018 schedule, we now have a 26 and one half week program with 26 weeks of actual games. Under the current model, the latest opening day has been April 1, the earliest was to have been March 26 in 2020. It will be interesting to see if the league goes with March 27 in 2025 and March 26 in 2026, or if it goes with later dates of April 3 and April 2 in those years.

In the divisional era from 1969-1984, the two League Championship Series were a best three of five format, so they would typically be done no later than one week following the conclusion of the regular season, take 1984 for example. The season ended Sunday September 30, the final and decisive game in the NLCS was a week later on Sunday October 7, sorry to bring up bad memories Cub fans. When the two LCS series became a best four out of seven, this meant that with more games and travel days built into the schedule, the World Series which typically began 9-10 days after the regular season ended now was always scheduled to start 13 days after the season’s conclusion. In 1984, the World Series began Tuesday October 9 and had it gone the distance, the final game would have been Wednesday October 17, this was the exact schedule five years earlier in 1979. The original 1990 schedule, which ended up slightly modified due to a lockout induced delay would have had a world Series that began Saturday October 13 and concluded as late as Sunday October 21. Those were the earliest years on the calendar with the 1984 and 1990 schedule program, a Monday April 2 to Sunday September 30 regular season. The latest dates during this period were 1985 and 1991, the season opening Monday April 8 and closing Sunday October 6. IN both of those seasons, the Fall classic would go the distance and end on Sunday October 27, the day we were setting our clocks back. The 1981 World Series, which started later due to an extra round of playoffs caused by the strike that summer held the record for the latest ending of a world Series by calendar date at the time, which also happened to be October 27, a Tuesday, that series would have ended the 28th had the Yankees forced a seventh game.

During the period from 1982-1993, spring training now started slightly earlier with the start of the regular season standardized to the first Monday after April 1. This meant that most teams opened exhibition play 30-32 days prior, in 1990 those dates were to have been Thursday March 1 to Saturday March 3. In 1991, they were Thursday March 7 to Saturday March 9.

Things began to creep earlier in 1996. IN 1994 when more playoffs were added, the original 1994 and 1995 schedules were to have followed the plan in prior similar calendar years, 1994 with a Sunday April 3 opener and most others the following day matching the April 4-5 openers of 1983 and 1988 with the regular season ending Sunday October 2. The playoffs would be extended by a week, so now the scheduled final day of the world Series had it been played in 1994 would have been Sunday October 30, while the 1995 series ended in game six Saturday October 28.

The league wanted to avoid having a November World Series game, so if the current scheduling procedure were maintained, this would mean that the latest start to a regular season would have been an opener on April 5 with the season ending October 3 and the final game of the World Series set for four weeks later on October 31. This meant that seasons that used to open April 6-8 would now see their starts pushed up a week to dates of March 30-april 1, which is exactly what the league would do. So in 1996, we had a special Sunday March 31 opener with most other teams opening the next day, which is what brought us those first February games of spring training. The world Series ended in six games on Saturday October 26. The league opted to not open the 1997 season on Monday March 31, moving to a Tuesday opener instead, but teams followed the prior example with spring training, so that most opened Thursday-Friday February 27-28. The World Series went the distance, with game 7 on Sunday October 26. The league again opted to open on a Tuesday in 1998, giving us the first league wide opening day of March 31, though a small number of teams opened the next day. Most teams had opened spring training games by Friday February 27. This meant that the World Series if it went the distance would have ended Sunday October 25, Yankee fans know it was a sweep that ended October 21, we won’t have a world Series end that early again if things don’t change.

The 1999 season returned to what most fans were more familiar with, the 1993 calendar was followed in that the first games of spring were starting March 4-6, the first day of the season for most teams was Monday April 5 with the return of the special prior Sunday opener, the season ending Sunday October 3. The World Series that year was again a sweep, it’s scheduled ending was Sunday October 31. The league would stick with this scheduling process through 2003, with the opening of the season moving earlier and earlier as the calendar dictated, Monday April 3 in 2000, April 2 in 2001, April 1 in 2002 and March 31 in 2003. But an American, in deed a global tragedy on September 11 meant sports had no choice and frankly an obligation to postpone games temporarily. This meant that we would have our first November world Series games. The old mark of October 28, 1995 would be shattered. The 2000 World Series had it gone the distance would have broken that mark with game 7 on Sunday October 29, but that series ended the prior Thursday. The rescheduled 2001 World Series did not start until October 27, the 4th game was ultimately one that went famously into November and one of the great World Series ever played would go to Sunday November 4.

The schedule program keeping with tradition would then readjust to an April 5 opening day in 2004, falling back to April 4, 3 and 2 through 2007. But the post season schedule would be modified in 2007. In 2004 through 2006, the World Series began 20 days after the season’s final Sunday. This meant start dates of October 23, 22 and 21, with final scheduled ending dates had those series gone the distance of October 31, 30 and 29. In 2007, the start date for TV was pushed back four full dates so that the World Series began the 4th Wednesday after the season concluded. The 2007 season ended Sunday September 30 which was supposed to have been the case in 2001, while 2008 ended September 28, matching the dates in 2003. But now instead of the world Series starting on October 20 and 18, it began October 24 and 22 in those two years. This meant that the deciding game if those series had gone the distance would have been on Thursday November 1 in 2007 and Thursday October 30 in 2008. Spring training games during this period continued to follow their typical approach, starting about 30 days prior to the regular season. this meant that some February games again appeared on the schedule for 2002, 2003 and 2008.

MLB still was trying to avoid starting prior to March 31, which was the start date in 2003 and 2008 with a special Sunday game the night prior each year. So the league went back to April 6 in 2009, which would have meant that for the first time under the old scheduling program, a Sunday 7th game of the World Series would have been November 1. But with the new starting window, the first game was not played until Wednesday October 28, which meant the series if it went all the way would have lasted until Thursday November 5, it ended one day prior and matched 2001 for the latest date a World Series had ended up to that time. IN 2010, the season started a day earlier given how the calendar works, so the final World Series game would have been November 4, that series ended November 1.

As for spring Training, 2009 was the second year of the World Baseball Classic, the first was in 2006. So MLB decided that rather than starting spring training games march 5-7, it would start over a week earlier as all teams played their first MLB exhibitions on Wednesday February 25. This marked the earliest date in history a spring training game had been played, and so 2009 held the mark for the earliest exhibition and tied the mark for the latest world Series game, but this was all intentionally designed. With no WBC in 2010, the exhibition slate started for most teams between March 4-6.

MLB trying to avoid a November World Series made an adjustment to the 2011 program, the season would be moved up four days, so the Monday April 4 opening would now be Thursday March 31 and the Sunday October 2 closing would now be Wednesday September 28, which turned out to be one of the great days and TV nights in baseball history. Sorry for opening painful memories Braves and Red sox fans, you both turned out OK in the years that followed. The World Series start date was still on a Wednesday, but it was moved up an entire week and the postseason was returned to more a look and feel fans were familiar with, so that the world Series began exactly 21 days following the end of the regular season on October 19. The 2011 event was scheduled for an October 27 ending, it was pushed back one day to Friday October 28. This was the earliest start to a World Series since the October 18 date in 2003.

But MLB now had another issue on its hands, it was about to add a wild Card game to the playoff program in 2012 and it still wanted to avoid a start prior to March 31, so that season the start was now pushed back a week to Thursday April 5 for most teams. The season would end on Wednesday October 3, under the old format, this season would have actually and concluded three days earlier. The World Series thus began late in 2012, an October 24 start just like we had five years prior in 2007, which would have meant a November 1 ending, but it was a sweep that was wrapped up October 27, just like the 2007 series.

MLB would return to the Monday opener we all were more accustomed to in 2013 on April 1, the look and feel of this schedule calendar was just like 1996 and 2002. The world Series start would still be in the middle of the week, but now another layer was added to the opening of the playoff procedure, which meant such a time frame was unavoidable. The 2013 series opened Wednesday October 23, it would have concluded no later than March 31 and did so on the 30th. IN 2014, the league removed an off day in the post season, so that the World Series began on a Tuesday, October 21 to be exact and it ended with the 7th game October 29. MLB would do something else though in 2014, it played games to count for the regular season in Australia. These games were 10 days prior to the opening game in the US, meaning the first games that counted were being played officially March 21-22, a new earliest marker. MLB had gone abroad previously to Japan in 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012, but those games were only five days prior to the start of the season and as a result, the earliest games played were the 2008 contests March 26-27.

Spring training in 2011 started with some teams playing as early as Saturday February 26, some did not start until Monday. In 2012, those dates were a week later, with starts of between March 3-5. In 2013 due to the return of the WBC, some teams began exhibition play as early as Friday February 22, a new record, 2014 exhibitions began February 27.

The 2015 season was a return to the scheduling used by MLB in 2009, which was a surprise to some. It was clear the league still didn’t want a North American start prior to March 31, which was the start date in 2014. So the regular season ended October 4 and this meant the World Series would have gone as late as November 4, potentially tying that record, it ended November 1. Spring games that year began for most teams between Tuesday March 3 and Thursday March 5, in 1987 and 1992 with an April 6 opener, the earliest games were March 5 for a few teams.

The 2016 and 2017 seasons would maintain the approach with adjustments for the calendar. Spring training in 2016 began during the middle of the week with teams playing games starting March 1-3, the season opened April 4 for most. The 2017 season brought the next installment of the WBC, so the league again went with an earlier start to exhibition play, some teams on Friday February 24, all others the next day. The regular season for most opened April 3. The World Series in both of these years went the distance, which meant a November 2 finish in 2016 and November 1 in 2017.

It was prior to 2018 that MLB added four regular season off days to the schedule, spreading games out ever so slightly. The 2018, 2019 and 2021 seasons maintained the scheduling approach used in prior years, as did the original 2020 program before it was scrapped due to COVID-19. So what would have been opening dates of April 2 and 1 in 2018 and 2019 became March 29 and 28. The 2020 program before it was revised would have been the first March 30 start under the old formula, now it would have been March 26. IN 2021, the start that would have been April 5 was now April 1. The world Series started October 23 and 22 in 2018 and 2019 and in 2021 it started on October 26. The 2018 series could have gone all the way to October 31, 2019 would go the distance to October 30 and 2021 which could have concluded November 3 ended a day prior.

With the earlier start to the season, MLB decided to keep the last weekend of February start to spring training that had been introduced in 2017. The whole league was playing exhibition ball by Saturday February 24 and 23 in the 2018 and 2019 seasons, February 22 in 2020. The revised 2021 program was a February 28 start.

The postseason would expand again in 2022 and because of a lockout, the season would be starting and ending late. The 2022 season was basically a 26 week program like what we were used too through 2017, The world Series though would now start 22 days after the season’s conclusion, Friday October 28, This meant that if things went the distance, that November 4 record would be broken again, but it held, the series ended on the 4th in six games. In 2023, the league kept the Friday start, so now the World Series was back to a start date of 26 days after the regular season ended, two days longer than what we had during the period from 2007 through 2010 when that peaked at 24 days. The 2023 season began on schedule using the current approach, with a Thursday March 30 beginning and a conclusion on Sunday October 1. The 2024 season will start March 28 and end September 29, matching the approach used in 2019. Spring training games in 2023 and 2024 like 2019 began the last weekend of February with games for most on Saturday, a few the prior Friday. What is not known yet, when the 2024 post season would be. If the league keeps in line with the 2023 calendar, the Wild Card rounds would be October 1-3, the divisional playoffs between October 5-12. This would mean the two LCS would be October 13-21 and 14-22, giving us a world Series that could go October 24-November 1.

IN my opinion there are too many spring training games and too many off days. When you look at the 2024 schedule for instance of the Astros, assuming no postponements, they will have played 57 games at the end of play on May 30. IN 2013, with the season starting four days later, they had played 54. Given the poor weather in November and late October that can be like early April, it is dangerous to be playing your most important games regularly after November 1, even with the climate warming and a quarter of the league playing in climate controlled venues. I would propose that spring training exhibition play be capped at a start of 30 days prior to the regular season and start the regular season in North America no later than April 4 and no earlier than March 29. The schedule would return to it’s typical calendar format used from 1982-2017 and the squeeze week where teams play an extra series would be resolved by having every team playing its chief interleague rival in a home-away series slated for Thursday-Sunday or Friday-Monday, a Thursday-Monday with an open Saturday could also be used if required. Since tie break games are not being used to decide the season standings anymore, two wild card series would be played the Monday-Wednesday following the season and those surviving teams would then open the division series against two hosts on Thursday. IN the opposite league, this timeline would be Tuesday-Thursday with the LDS opening Friday. The league with a Monday wild card would be pushed to Tuesday if makeup games were needed to settle regular season ties and the ALDS would also be pushed back a day accordingly. This would have the best teams that got previous byes starting their playoffs by Thursday or Friday as they used too, not waiting until Saturday.

Using 2024 as an example, the ALWC round could be September 30-October 2 with the ALDS October 3-4, 6-7 and 9. The NLWC would be October 1-3, with the NLDS October 4-5, 7-8 and 10. The ALCS would then be October 11-12, 14-16 and 18-19, with the NLCS October 12-13, 15-17 and 19-20. The regular season would end as it is scheduled too September 29, but it could have started on April 1 like it did in 2013, some special Sunday premier games could be scheduled, which I found to be a nice kickoff to the season that the league used in 2016 and 2017. The first games of the exhibition season in 2024 using my proposal would have started Saturday March 2 or Friday March 1 if a team was opening on Sunday March 31, with all teams as is now practiced having an open date between the final exhibition games and the start of the regular championship season.

Based on my proposal, the latest regular season start of Monday April 4 would result in teams playing their first exhibition games on Saturday March 5, with the regular season ending Sunday October 2. The playoffs would provide wild Cards October 3-5 and 4-6, LDS matchups October 6-7, 9-10 and 12 on one side, 7-8, 10-11 and 13 on the other. The two LCS matchups would be October 14-15, 17-19 and 21-22, as well as October 15-16, 18-20 and 22-23. The World Series would be October 25-26, 28-30 and November 1-2. This was what we had in 2016 for the World Series.

At the other end of the spectrum, the season that started Monday March 29 would have spring training for most teams starting Saturday February 27, with the regular season ending Sunday September 26. The wild card series would run September 27-29 and 28-30, with the LDS going September 30-October 1, 3-4 and 6, as well as October 1-2, 4-5 and 7. The two LCS matchups would be October 8-9, 11-13 and 15-16, as well as October 10-11, 13-15 and 16-17. The World Series would go October 19-20, 22-24 and 26-27. This would match 2011 in terms of what a mid-week World Series would have felt like and if using the Tuesday start, it is what 2010 and 2021 would have been like.

During the division era from

If you have been following any news about the announced schedule of games for baseball in 2024, you see that Fox and ESPN give us the same group of teams time after time, no wonder people call baseball a regional sport. Memo, before expansion, it was truly a regional sport confined to Chicago, St. Louis, New York, Washington-Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Boston. MLB shares just about all its markets with the NFL, the largest combination of shared markets in sports among the five major sports leagues in the US and Canada. The truth is, MLB has not held its media partners to account for such short sited programming. This is where Apple has to its credit tried to show every team at least once or twice per season. the one thing I don’t like is how the service is advertised as two Friday night games, but often they are lined up against one another. Teams can change the start times of games on the fly to accommodate TV, so with that in mind, here’s a proposed schedule of games for the Friday night’s from March 29 through August 16, covering 21 weeks and 42 games. The remaining Friday’s of August 23 through September 20 should be left for compelling matchups based on the status of the pennant races, Apple currently doesn’t have a Friday night game the final week of the regular season, at least that is how it was done in past years. Where adjustments are needed to start times, you will see those noted. I kept one cubs game as a day game.

Friday March 29, Blue Jays at Rays (6:50 ET), Giants at Padres (scheduled for 9:40 ET, move it to 10:05).

Friday April 5, Phillies at Nationals (6:45 ET), Red Sox at Angels, (scheduled at 9:38 ET, move it to 10:00).

Friday April 12, Brewers at Orioles (7:05 ET), Cubs at mariners (scheduled for 9:40 ET, move it to 10:10).

Friday April 19, Tigers at Twins (scheduled 8:10 ET, move it to 7:10), Diamondbacks at Giants (10:15 ET).

Friday April 26, Dodgers at Blue Jays (7:07 ET), Pirates at mariners (scheduled 9:40 ET, move it to 10:10).

Friday May 3, Brewers at Cubs (2:20 ET), Orioles at Reds (6:10 ET).

Friday May 10, Astros at Tigers (scheduled 6:40 ET, move to 6:10), Rangers at Rockies (scheduled 8:40 ET, move to 9:10).

Friday May 17, White Sox at Yankees (7:05 ET), Reds at Dodgers (10:10 ET).

Friday May 24, Braves at Pirates (6:40 ET), Marlins at Diamondbacks (9:40 ET).

Friday May 31, Athletics at Braves (7:20 ET move it to 7:10), Yankees at Giants (10:15 ET).

Friday June 7, Mariners at Royals (scheduled 8:10 ET, move it to 6:10), Rockies at Cardinals (scheduled 8:15 ET, move it to 9:15).

Friday June 14, Guardians at Blue Jays (7:07 ET), White Sox at Diamondbacks (scheduled 9:40 ET, move it to 10:10).

Friday June 21, Rays at Cubs (scheduled 2:20 ET, move it to 6:05), Nationals at Rockies (scheduled 8:40 ET, move it to 9:10).

Friday June 28, Reds at Cardinals (Scheduled 8:15 ET, move it to 7:35), Dodgers at Giants (Scheduled 10:15 ET, move it to 10:35).

Friday July 5, Cardinals at Nationals (scheduled 6:45 ET, move it to 6:05), Rays at Rangers (8:05 ET move it to 9:05).

Friday July 12, Athletics at Phillies (6:40 ET), Braves at Padres (9:40 ET).

Friday July 19, Mets at Marlins (7:10 ET), Red Sox at dodgers (10:10 ET).

Friday July 26, Cubs at Royals (scheduled 8:10 ET, move it to 7:10), Pirates at Diamondbacks (scheduled 9:40 ET, move it to 10:10).

Friday August 2, Orioles at Guardians (scheduled 7:10 ET, move it to 6:10), White Sox at Twins scheduled 8:10 ET, move it to 9:10).

Friday August 9, Reds at Brewers (scheduled 8:10 ET, move it to 6:10), Cubs at white Sox (scheduled 8:10 ET, move it to 9:10).

Friday August 16, Yankees at Tigers (6:40 ET), Braves at Angels (scheduled 9:38 ET, move it to 9:45).

Many things get the hard core baseball fan ready for the coming season. Among those might be the first day of spring training exhibition games or the day catchers and pitchers report. It might be your favorite teams kickoff event, the Cubs convention is perhaps the most famous of these events. For others, it is the release of the subjective prospect rankings, something Baseball America pioneered when it released its first such list in 1990. For quite some time now, annual list of a similar nature have been produced by baseball specific resources like Fangraphs, Baseball Prospectus and MLB’s own Pipeline which is it’s prospect driven site, while other more general sports sites like ESPN and The Athletic have also done so.

What is interesting to me is how there seems to be quite a bit of common thinking for the very top tier of these lists, but they quickly go off in different directions after about the top 20 players or so.

While the MLB and ESPN lists are free for all to see, you have to be a subscriber to Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus to see all of their more in depth content. So out of respect to those publications, I’m not going to run down every player and compare how they rank on all of these lists, but I want to make note of trends.

Note that Baseball Prospectus ranks 101 players, the others 100, but I did include player 101 for this review. A total of 140 players were on at least one of the four lists, 68 made it on all four, more about how this all broke down shortly. Of note, Baseball America was an outlier in years past as they would include major international signings who were experienced pros from Japan on their lists, starting this year, they like the others will not rank a player who is deemed to be a professional under the MLB rules for signing international players at or over age 25.

I compiled all of the ranked players on the lists and sorted them by players who were ranked on all four lists, then those on three, then those on two, and then those on a single list. Each player then got an average rank score and no surprise, Jackson Holliday of the Orioles who was the player at number 1 on every list had a rank score then of 1. There are some players who have better rank scores who are not on all lists, so I’m going to look at all players who were on all lists first, then work my way down from there. Players who have a tie score will then further be ranked based on who had the best or worst overall ranking.

Of the 68 players who were on all four lists, the player by far who had the worst average ranking was Bryce Eldrige of the Giants at 86.5, Baseball America had him at 57, while he was ranked 96 at both MLB and ESPN, 97 at Baseball Prospectus. Who was the second player after Jackson Holliday at the opposite end of this spectrum, Jackson Chourio of the Brewers, but his average rank of 3 was because Baseball Prospectus has him at number 6, the others all have him at 2.

There are 16 players who appear on 3 of the lists, interestingly the players who are missing from one of the lists are all either not on ESPN, Baseball America or Baseball Prospectus. All 16 of the players on a trio of lists made the cut for MLB, 6 were on all but Baseball America, while 4 each were on all but ESPN and Baseball Prospectus. Michael Busch, just recently obtained by the Cubs via trade had an average prospect ranking of 55 among the services that ranked him, he didn’t make the grade for ESPN but was ranked 43 by Baseball America, 51 by MLB and 71 by Baseball Prospectus. The best ranking for a player who didn’t make the cut for BA was 2023 Diamondbacks draftee Tommy Troy, who had an average rank of 58.67 among the trio who listed him, 35 at BP, 67 at ESPN and 74 at MLB. The best ranking average for a player who didn’t make the cut for BP, Pirates pitching prospect Jared Jones who had an average rank of 63, which included 53 from ESPN, 62 from MLB and 74 from BA.

There were 25 players who made it on a pair of lists. Here ESPN has the most common ground, 6 players were on their list along with BA, while they shared 5 with BP and another 4 with MLB. Of the 10 remaining players, 4 were also on MLB and BA, while BP shared 3 each with the MLB and BA lists.

The best average rank score with this group, AJ Smith-Shawver of the Braves with a 55.5 score, ranking 42 on BA and 69 on MLB. Dodgers prospect Josue De Paula was next at 58, the best average of a player who was ranked by the combo of ESPN and BP, 68 by the former and 48 by the latter. What is funny here, the top 5 average scores with this group were all either ranked by ESPN and BP or by MLB and BA. Cubs prospect Kevin Alcantara at 72.5 is the first player we see on the combo of MLB and BP, ranked 65 by MLB and 80 by BP. The first player on the combo of BA and BP with an average rank of 73.5 is speedy Cardinals outfield prospect Victor Scott II, ranked 83 at BA and 64 at BP. Reds prospect Edwin Arroyo with an average of 75.5 is the highest ranked player from the combo of ESPN and MLB, an 84 from ESPN and 67 from MLB. Finally, Yankees prospect Austin Wells with a 76.5 average has the highest combo from ESPN and BA, 82 and 71 rankings respectably.

In terms of the players who appear on only one list, the highest ranked player on each is Zach Dezenzo, an Astros prospect ranked 40 overall by BP. The remaining players of this sort, Parker Meadows of the Tigers who is 45 at ESPN, Mason Miller of the Athletics ranked 45 at BA and Aidan Miller of the Phillies who ranks 61 at MLB. I mentioned Bryce Eldridge earlier who is the lowest ranked player who is on all four lists at all but BA, on the BA list, that honor goes to Dodgers prospect Nick Frasso who is ranked 97 at BA, with rankings of 67 at BP, 80 at MLB and 86 at ESPN.

Finally, a note about who made the bottom of each list. Mariners prospect Lazaro Montes was 100 at BA and did not appear on any other ranking. Once highly rated Guardians prospect Daniel Espino who has battled an injury history was 100 at MLB, he also appeared at 92 on the ESPN list. Another very famous prospect, Druw Jones of the diamondbacks was 100 at ESPN, he is also ranked by both MLB at 78 and BP at 81, he didn’t make the BA list and I personally think that is a mistake as I would like to see what he can do in a fully healthy season, something he has not yet experienced in two years of pro ball.

The bottom players at 100 and 101 for BP only appeared on their list, Juan Brito of the Guardians and Chase Davis of the Cardinals.

Tommy Troy who was mentioned earlier as not appearing on all four lists, unranked by BA was the highest ranked player by BP at 35 who did not appear on all four lists. The highest ranked players on the other lists who didn’t make the cut on all four, The previously mentioned AJ Smith-Shawver who was the highest rated such player at BA with a 42 rank, he only made one other list as noted with MLB. The highest ranked MLB player who didn’t make every list was Phillies pitching prospect Mick Abel, he’s ranked 49 at MLB and is listed at 64 for BA and 78 for ESPN, unranked at BP. Finally, the top ranked ESPN prospect who is not on all the lists, Cubs pitcher Jordan wicks who is still prospect eligible and had a good brief cup of coffee in the majors last fall. He’s on just two list, ranked 41 at ESPN and 94 at BP.

Finally, a focus on the top 10 rankings. The top 10 players based on ranking average are Jackson Holliday of the Orioles with an average rank of 1, Jackson Chourio of the Brewers at 3, the Rays Junior Caminero at 3.25, the Rangers Wyatt Langford at 4.25 and Evan Carter at 4.75 round out the top half. The back half of that list features the Nationals Dylan Crews at 5.75, Pirates pitching prospect Paul Skenes at 7, Padres catching prospect Ethan Salas at 9.25, and a tie at 10.75 between two players, the Nationals James Wood and the White Sox Colsen Montgomery. The top 7 on this list made the top 10 in all rankings, Salas is top 10 in all but BP where he is 12, Montgomery is 8 at ESPN, 9 at MLB, 15 at BA and 11 at BP for two top 10 appearances, while Wood despite just one top 10 rankings which is a 7 at BP, gets marks of 11 at both ESPN and BA, while MLB ranks him at 14.

A small number of additional players appear on at least one top 10 list. Tigers top prospect Jackson Jobe is on only the ESPN list at 10, his other rankings are 17 at BP, 20 at BA and 25 at MLB. Walker Jenkins of the Twins is top 10 at MLB ranking in the 10 position, his other marks are 13 at BA, 14 at ESPN and 16 at BP. BA has two top 10 players who are not on other lists, diamondbacks prospect Jordan Lawlar comes in at 7 on that list, with rankings of 11 at MLB, 14 at BP and 17 at ESPN. Also they have orioles catching prospect Samuel Basallo at 10, his other marks are13 BP, 17 MLB and 27 ESPN. Finally in addition to James Wood, two other players are top 10 on just the BP list giving them a trio of such players. Roman Anthony of the Red sox has the largest top 10 difference between a list he is on and his overall average, BP ranks him number 8, while he is listed at 21 BA, 23 ESPN and 24 MLB. Padres prospect Jackson Merrill is ranked 10 at BP, he has marks of 12 at both ESPN and MLB, while BA ranks him at 17.

We are still in the depths of a cold winter blast over much of the US on this January morning, but four weeks from now, all MLB teams will have reported to spring training.

With that in mind, I will share some dates that you could highlight on your baseball calendar.

First, here are the reporting dates for all teams, listed as first workout for pitchers and catchers and then full squad workouts. Most teams split those apart by five days, a few by four or six. You will note the earlier reporting dates for the Padres and dodgers, since they have the March two-game series in Seoul. While the Dodgers and Padres each have their own combo of early work out reporting dates, eight teams in each circuit will start February 14 and 19, five in each February 15 and 20, with a pair of Florida teams taking modified s schedules of February 14-18 and February 14-20.

Pitchers and catchers report Friday February 9, remaining players Wednesday February 14 for the Dodgers in the Arizona Cactus League.

Pitchers and catchers report Sunday February 11, remaining players Friday February 16 for the Padres in the Arizona Cactus League.

Pitchers and catchers report Wednesday February 14, remaining players Sunday February 18 for the twins in the Florida Grapefruit League.

Pitchers and catchers report Wednesday February 14, remaining players Monday February 19 for the Astros, Cardinals, Mets, Phillies, Pirates, Rays, Red Sox, and Tigers in the Florida Grapefruit League; for the Angels, Athletics, Cubs, Diamondbacks, Rangers, Reds, Royals, and White Sox in the Arizona Cactus League.

Pitchers and catchers report Wednesday February 14, remaining players Tuesday February 20 for the Nationals in the Florida Grapefruit League.

Pitchers and catchers report Thursday February 15, remaining players Tuesday February 20 for the Blue Jays, Braves, Marlins, Orioles, and Yankees in the Florida Grapefruit League; for the Brewers, Giants, Guardians, Mariners, and Rockies in the Arizona Cactus League.

For those who like to follow their teams live in spring training action via radio or TV, you will have some opportunities for night starts or at least late afternoon starts depending on your time zone and teams situation. Most day games in spring training start at just after 1:00 local, with most night games starting anywhere from 6:05 to 7:05 local. Florida teams that have a home base in the Central time zone will have night starts during the traditional 5:00 drive home, while central and eastern time teams in Arizona could have night starts that are as late as 8:00 or 9:00 prior to March 10 and as late as 9:00 or 10:00 from march 10 onward after we spring forward, since Arizona does not change clocks.

Here are all the currently scheduled games with night time starts on the spring training schedule. Exhibitions against college or minor league teams are not included in this list. Note that there are some days in spring training, usually Sunday and some week days during the first week of action where no night contest is schedule. The listed time is local to Florida and Arizona. Central based fans move back one hour from published Florida times. For Arizona, Pacific time fans move back one hour through March 9, the time is the same in your zone starting March 10, Mountain zone fans match the Arizona time through March 9, then it is an hour later for you starting March 10. Central time fans are one hour ahead of listed Arizona starts through March 9 then two hours ahead after that date, while those values are two hours and then three for those fans in the Eastern zone.

Saturday February 24, Astros at Nationals 6:05

Thursday February 29, Mets at Astros 6:05, Marlins at Yankees 6:35, and Dodgers at Reds 6:05.

Friday March 1, Blue Jays at Yankees 6:35, Diamondbacks at Reds 6:05, and Guardians at Dodgers 6:05.

Monday March 4, Yankees at Marlins 6:40

Tuesday March 5, Cubs at Royals 6:05 and Angels at Dodgers 6:05.

Wednesday March 6, Pirates at Orioles 6:05.

Thursday March 7, Blue Jays at Tigers 6:05, Nationals at Mets 6:10, Tigers at Yankees 6:35, Cubs at Reds 6:05 and Dodgers at Giants 7:05.

Friday March 8, Tigers at Orioles 6:05, Cardinals at Nationals 6:05, Mets at Marlins 6:40, Reds at Dodgers 6:05, Giants at Padres 6:40 and Brewers at Athletics 7:05.

Saturday March 9, Red Sox at Rays 5:05 ET (in Dominican Republic) and Marlins at Nationals 6:05.

Monday March 11, Marlins at Mets 6:10.

Tuesday March 12, Mets at Nationals 6:05, Brewers at Cubs 6:05, White Sox at Reds 6:05.

Wednesday March 13, Braves at Orioles 6:05 and Astros at Mets 6:10.

Thursday March 14, Astros at Nationals 6:05 and Reds at Rangers 6:05.

Friday March 15, Red Sox at Twins 6:05, Phillies at Astros 6:05, Marlins at Cardinals 6:05, Nationals at Mets 6:10, and

Pirates at Yankees 6:35.

Saturday March 16, Mets at Astros 6:05 and Pirates at Braves 6:05.

Sunday March 17, Brewers at Royals 4:05 and Reds at Guardians 4:05, these are included as they are later starts that are night time

back east.

Monday March 18, Nationals at Astros 6:05 and Giants at Reds 6:05.

Tuesday March 19, Phillies at Tigers 6:05, marlins at Astros 6:05, Cardinals at Mets 6:10, Cubs at Diamondbacks 6:05 and

Royals at Giants 7:05.

Wednesday March 20, Cardinals at Nationals 6:05, Phillies at Orioles 6:05, Pirates at Yankees 6:35, and Angels at Royals 6:05.

Thursday March 21, Orioles at Red Sox 6:05, Blue Jays at Pirates 6:05, Giants at Brewers 6:10 and Reds at Mariners 6:40.

Friday March 22, Nationals at Astros 6:05, Pirates at Orioles 6:05 and Cardinals at Marlins 6:40.

Saturday March 23, Blue Jays at Orioles 6:05, Marlins at Nationals 6:05 and Twins at Red Sox 6:05.

Also note that while no more night games are played in Florida or Arizona, there are some exhibitions at MLB stadiums that include some late afternoon or evening starts, dodgers and Angels March 24-26 with games scheduled for both cities, the same for the Athletics and Giants March 25-26, the Red Sox and Rangers March 25-26 with the first game only at night in Arlington, and the same type of arrangement march 25-26 between the mariners and Padres in San Diego.

Also note that while this is not a night game, there is a rare Grapefruit League and Cactus League crossover that will be played in Arizona, the Cubs final games on Monday March 25 and Tuesday March 26 are against the Cardinals, with 1:05 and 12:05 local starts. The Cardinals leave Florida after their final game on the prior Sunday to head west, as they open the regular season on the road against the Dodgers March 28.

Anyone who has followed this, which is probably not more than one person, will note a change coming this fall. Since I don’t put a lot of time into this and don’t get much traffic, I can’t justify the $50 per year to keep the more fancy version up and running, so in October during the American and National League Division Series, it will return to the traditional free version of the blog. I’ll continue to write here from time to time, so if you do like what you read, I hope you will keep along for the journey, where ever it goes.

IN today’s ever increasing demand for instant information, not all choices are created equal. When you weight that immediate information against the streaming backdrop that can result in delays of 1-2 minutes from the live linear radio and TV experience, some times those notifications spoil the game you are otherwise on the edge of your seat for.

I have breaking league alerts turned on for ESPN and the various league apps on my phone. I don’t use the MLS app because I find it too frustrating, more on that shortly.

Tonight was a perfect example of this tug of war when it comes to information. I’m alerted that Michael Lorenzon has a no-hitter going to the 9th, so living in Texas, I’m going to get that via a streaming platform, in this case via audio through either my SiriusXM or MLB aps. But those audio streams are both well over a minute behind what I would have heard if I could have picked up the live radio signal from Philly. So as the game was near it’s end and alerts start going off on my phone, since I use a screen reader as a blind person, I had to turn off the speech so I would not hear what the alert was saying. Did he get the no-hitter, was it broken up with two outs? I wanted to enjoy hearing the result via the broadcast, not find it out from a notification on my phone. The notifications are great when you are in situations where maybe you don’t have the ability to focus on a broadcast or where pulling it up is not reliable, such as when you are flying on an airplane and more demanding streams are not as reliable as the quick text alerts via the push notifications. But there is always this choice we have to current make as a sports fan.

Not all of the notification processes are setup equal though and in terms of accessibility, not all of the apps are as friendly as you would like them to be. So what I am going to share this morning is what the experience is like setting up notifications via the various apps and some thoughts on the type of notifications and their value. A later post is going to talk about the quality of what those notifications look like in greater detail as I test some particular items that I will explain below.

First, let’s start with the two media aps and I’m speaking about all of these from an iOS point of view as that is my preferred platform. I have found that the easiest two aps to configure and figure out in terms of layout when navigating using a screen reader are ESPN and CBS Sports. When you first setup the CBS app, it takes just a second to get things going but once you get to the screen where you can pick teams, that process is very quick and reliable.

When you select a team from a given sport, let’s use the Astros as an example in MLB, the app chooses some notifications you might want to have on for the team, such as team news, score change, game start and final. There is also a league notifications for MLB and that is off, once you turn that on for league news, you will see that it is in the on position when you add another team. CBS has a very customizable baseball alert package, you can get an update every time there is a scoring change in the game for your team, you can get an update on the game status at the end of every inning or every third inning. They also have an extra innings notification and a close game notification. If you want less detail, you can just keep it simple and go with something as limited as game start and final. One thing unique to baseball and soccer unlike the other sports, is that you in some apps can get starting lineup notifications. With the MLB alerts, CBS does not offer the starting lineup, but that is something I personally can live without.

In terms of what ESPN gives you, the package is similar, though when you choose an MLB team for their alert package, only team news and final score are chosen as on, game start interestingly is off. Like CBS they offer the ability to get an update on every scoring play, or what they call a third, sixth, final option, you can turn both on if you wish. ESPN doesn’t offer the status update after every inning and they don’t offer an extra innings alert. It does appear from some testing though that if you have the third, sixth, final option turned on, you are then told if a game is going to extras. ESPN also like CBs has the close game alert that you can choose and unlike CBS, they have a unique starting lineups button you can turn on or off, note that this is only a baseball offering on ESPN. Also, ESPN handles team and league alerts as separate items, so if you want team alerts but not league wide alerts, team news for the teams you are following would just focus on those teams. If you tap the alerts for MLB the NFL, NHL or NBA, it will turn on league alerts and in the case of football and basketball, you have a draft option you can turn on, in baseball and football, a fantasy option. Hockey is just news from the league. MLS is a bit different on ESPN in that it gives you the option to follow just MLS or other soccer news as well.

The NFL, NHL and NBA options on ESPN and CBS are all very similar. All give you a team news feature and the league option, these work the same way as what I described in the baseball example. Football and hockey give you the options for every scoring play and or end of quarter/period updates, close game options are also provided if you want that. IN the NBA, the alerts are tied to the end of the quarter if you want those in addition to the close game and final score. CBS unlike ESPN offers and overtime selection that you can use in all three of these sports.

CBS with these three sports like baseball by default is going to give you the game start and end for each team plus news, scoring change is also on for football and hockey, the end of quarter/period options are off in all three sports, with the final score obviously turned on. ESPN gives you by default team news, game start and final, interesting that the game start is on by default in these three unlike baseball with the ESPN app.

In terms of the ease of setting up these apps from an accessibility viewpoint, CBS crushes ESPN hands down. First ESPN limits the number of teams you can get to about 150, it appears that CBS has no limits at all, at least I have not run into one when testing them. With CBS, it is very obviously what the status of the button is when you tap it, it turns on or off should you want to flip it from the status it appears in when looking at your various options. The app is very responsive and does not drag at all. This is absolutely not the case with ESPN and often when you have tapped a team, you later will discover that your selection did not register because each time you tap a team, the app lags behind to register that team choice as one of the categories you now want to follow. It is a rather frustrating experience.

Before I compare the league apps, a note on MLS which I don’t use because of a frustrating experience. While it is technically and accessible app, the design does not play nice with screen readers and you have to be a very experienced user of the technology to make the app work. Also when you select a team, it automatically loads three notifications but because the app has a limit on how many notifications you can receive, you can’t set up alerts on every team. So after you add a few teams, you have to go in and remove some notifications in order to then go and add the rest of the teams from the league. At the league alert level, MLS gives you an option for every goal or a start, half and full status, which gives you an alert when the game starts, when it gets to the half, when the second half starts and when it is over. While I don’t mind the update at the half, I find the update that we are coming back from half time to be of no value.

As for the league apps, there are various things to like about them and areas for improvement. Here, the NFL is by far the most frustrating app, so I will talk about it last. Starting with MLB, at the league level you can turn on or off news which focuses on breaking league news and some times they will send out a notification to a story about the league such as the playoff chase. At the team level, you can get news, game start and final, score change, lead change, pitching change, condensed game and video highlights. MLB on its app does not offer an inning by inning or every third inning update like the media apps, the only way you would no a game was in extra innings would be to get an update via a pitching change, lead change or scoring change alert which does tell you the game score and inning when the play has occurred. The pitching change update tells you what the status is in terms of base runners when the new pitcher is coming into the game.

I personally would not mind having the inning status updates if you wanted to get less frequent updates but still have n idea of how things were going in the game. Where I have issues with MLB is that their news option gives you too many updates. If you have news on for each team and the league sends out a reminder about all star voting, you are going to get 30 alerts, one for every team. That should be made into some sort of other category that you can turn on or off at the team level. MLB also sends out the starting lineups, but it is part of the news notifications, you don’t have a separate choice that you can make here either. Also MLB will often send a news alert with a note about some major play that just happened, a couple minutes after you were alerted to that play if you had your scoring or lead change alerts turned on. Those kind of alerts about big plays should be provided if you chose the in game video highlights, I think of news as important alerts like trades, suspensions, or injuries during a game. MLB also does not usually do a good job of alerting that a game is delayed for one reason or another and when it says a game is about to start, that notification goes out 25 or 30 minutes before the actual start, some times the game never does start because a storm comes back over the ballpark. They should do like ESPN and CBS in that respect and send the alert when the game is actually literally starting.

The notifications process with the MLB app is as perfect as you can get when it comes to accessibility and it is very easy to use. The NBA and NHL apps also score perfect when it comes to access in the notification area. The NBA app is a bit more tricky some times trying to follow teams as you have to follow them in order to setup the alerts, this is not the case in the other three league apps. The NBA choices are just like what you get from the media companies, game start and end, team news, quarter end, close game and unlike the media companies, the NBA has the useless coming back from half time feature that I don’t have a need for. The NBA app by default when you follow a team to setup alerts has the game start and end options turned on. Interestingly, their app also does not offer the overtime alert like CBS, I assume that would just be implied via the quarter end alerts if you have a tie game after the 4th quarter.

The NHL has perhaps the most customizable app. You can get what they call warmup in addition to game start and final, plus you can choose to be alerted on every goal, the end of the period, for close games, going to overtime or going to a shootout. The close game setting can be done at either the individual team level or the league level. At the league wide level in addition to news, one cool feature if you follow or favorite a team is that you can get goal horns for your alerts when you get notifications that the given team scored a goal or when a game ends in victory for that team. So if you followed both the Stars and Blackhawks, the Chicago horn would score for each of their goals, likewise for Dallas and when the final score came in, you would hear the horn of the winning team. At the team level, the default items that are set to on are news, game start and final.

Now for the NFL. This app is not quite as frustrating as MLS, but it is close. There are several buttons on the app that are not properly marked and so what you hear is button, with no description of what that button does. Note that to setup notifications, on the main screen you will find an unmarked button if you are using a screen reader. Tap that button and then swipe for a while and you will get to the notifications, which you can setup. At the league level, there is a breaking news option and a news and highlights option. I chose just the breaking news option. There is also a close game alerts you can choose. At the team level, the NFL by default gives you game start and final, you can also choose scoring play alerts, like MLB and unlike the media apps, you can’t get updates by the inning/quarter and so you don’t truly have a since for how a game in progressing until a scoring play happens or if you get an alert about a close game. Two of the six alerts on the screen I have no use for, team shop and team tickets, so all you are choosing is game start, final scores, scoring play and a news/highlights option. It would be helpful again to have an option that is just more hard news, separate the highlights to a different option and having the quarter by quarter update is another nice thing that I wish that app would provide.

Two other bones to pick with the NFL concern accessibility and the alert style. First, their app is not as easy to follow in terms of knowing what you are choosing, because you hear the name of a button on or off, then after that you swipe and hear what it goes to. In other word, you hear button on, then you have to swipe to hear that it is assigned to final score. The name of what that button does should be read when you are first moving on to that button. IN addition, the app some times lags like ESPN and so it is not always clear if your choice registered, so you have to go back and look to make sure it did what you wanted. Finally, the back button is an invisible graphic, so want to go from the Cowboys to the Texans, when you finish with one, swipe all the way to the left until you get an alert that you can go no further, then tap on that and what do you know, you are back at the beginning of the list of teams to choose from.

The other big issue with the NFL app, double alerts! Let’s say you have alerts for all teams in certain situations turned on, it doesn’t matter if it is game start, scoring play, or final score. When an alert comes in about that game, you are sent two alerts if you are following both teams. No other sports app does that, because they are designed to be smart enough to know that the final score alert for Marlins verses Astros need only be sent once if the user is set to get the alert for both Miami and Houston since they are playing one another. This is true for all the other league apps, only the NFL falls short in this area.

There are a couple other things I need to test and I am going to address these in a follow up post. What happens if a replay changes the outcome of a scoring play. Some times the MLB app will alert on a scoring play, but no alert is sent if that play was undone. There was a game a year or two ago where it appeared the home team had won on a walk off hit that scored two runs. The first alert said final score, home team winning with the score. But then a funny thing happened, another alert came in and the score was changed, the batter was out, the runs didn’t score and now the visiting team won. MLB has never during the replay era sent out corrections on these kind of updates, which I find very frustrating. This is something I’m going to test for a while with ESPN and CBS on specific teams to see if either of them do a better job on handling such situations. I’m also going to test those apps alongside the NFL and NHL for the same type of concern.

Finally, a note about the notifications when a game ends. ESPN send the alert with the team letter abbreviation such as CHI for the Bulls and MIA for the Heat, then it also includes the team names and the final score. I personally find that to be unnecessary, you have already told me it is an NBA game with the basketball emoji, you can just say bulls and Heat with the final. That is how the NBA app does it, in fact all the league apps alert by team names, no city and no city abbreviation codes. When it comes to baseball alerts of this type, MLB tells you the winning and losing pitcher, not the save, ESPN includes the save. ESPN though refers to the pitcher by first name Initial and last name, MLB gives you the whole name of the pitcher which I like. I need to test CBs to see what their approach is. One thing CBs does that I find personally of no value, the point spread. I don’t need to know what the spread was on a given game, I just want the final score. To me, if you bet on the Bulls to cover against the Heat and you knew your bet was Chicago plus 9 and Miami only won by 5, then you already know you won the bet.

IN a follow up post, I will write more about the way the various media apps alert about game status and news stories and compare them to the league apps. Since I am going to wait for the beginning of basketball and hockey this October to also file those comparisons, you will see an updated post in this space around the time the World Series is getting ready to start.

Maybe you like watching your baseball on TV or listening to radio broadcasts of your local team, maybe you even use the MLB audio service or SiriusXM to listen to games from around the league. What ever your method of following baseball, now with the 2024 schedule out, here’s an idea for you if you want to try and see every team play during the 2024 regular season.

The 2024 season is just like 1996 in that both are in what is a leap year that begins on the same day. The regular season of course starts earlier now with the extra off days, so what would have been a Monday April 1 opening day is now Thursday March 28, the final day of the season is October 1.

In 1996, I had just turned 23 and was beginning my senior year of college. Since my wife and friends give me grief and justifiably so about how so much of my way my memory works revolves around baseball, I thought about a quick and easy way to put together the lists of games.

There will be two lists for you to choose from. The first is based off the opening day matchups in 1996, when the Athletics actually did play home games in Vegas because of a delay in the finished reworking of the Coliseum to make the Raiders happy. That didn’t work out so well now did it? The other is based off the schedule of games for Sunday July 21, a date that means a lot as it was when I first met one of my best friends through a church retreat I was attending.

Since the Rays and Diamondbacks did not yet play games in 1996, their going to be listed on both of these lists for their three game set scheduled for mid august in Florida.

The Astros were an NL team in 1996, but the 2024 Houston interleague slate will have them at home against both Atlanta and the dodgers, the two teams they will play on these lists, which were home dates in the Houston Astrodome in 1996. The Brewers, an AL team in 1996 now in the NL played against the Angels on the road to open and the Yankees at home that July, in 2024 the Yankees visit Milwaukee while the Angels play the Brewers in Anaheim. Also, the Washington Nationals who were the Montreal Expos in 1996 will be a road team in both of these situations as they were at Cincinnati to open the 1996 campaign and in July, they played the Mets at New York.

One thing you will quickly note here, the list of games for the first set only involves one divisional matchup between Detroit and Minnesota, they were not division mates in 1996. The second set has 11 divisional matchups, the max you can have is 12, the only one of the intraleague matchups for 2024 that is not intradivisional in set two is Detroit and Toronto, who were division mates in 1996. So in some ways, the second set of games is much easier to arrange from a travel point of view, since 11 of the 15 matchups will take place twice in the host ballpark.

Now for your 2024 game dates.

First option with 2024 dates listed, 45 total games.

Two series, Pittsburgh at Miami and Washington at Cincinnati which were the 1996 opener are also the 2024 opener. To see two games at each city, it will be opening at Miami.

Pirates at Marlins, March 28-29

Nationals at Reds, March 30-31

Royals at Orioles, April 1-3

Yankees at Guardians, April 12-14

Rockies at Phillies, April 15-17

Cardinals at Mets, April 26-28

Padres at Cubs, May 6-8

Blue Jays at Athletics, June 7-9

White Sox at Mariners, June 10-13

Brewers at Angels, June 17-19

Tigers at Twins, July 2-4

Dodgers at Astros, July 26-28

Red Sox at Rangers, August 2-4

Braves at Giants, august 12-15

Diamondbacks at Rays, August 16-18

Second option with 2024 dates listed, 46 total games.

Athletics at Rangers, April 9-11

Braves at Astros, April 15-17

Yankees at Brewers, April 26-28

Phillies at Marlins, May 10-12

Twins at Guardians, May 17-19

Cubs at Cardinals, May 24-26

Reds at Pirates, June 17-19

Dodgers at Giants, June 28-30

Mariners at Angels, July 11-14

Tigers at Blue Jays, July 19-21

Royals at White Sox, July 29-31

Rockies at Padres, august 2-4

Diamondbacks at Rays, August 16-18

Orioles at Red Sox, September 9-11

Nationals at Mets, September 16-18

One thing that is now seeming like a future baseball event is the long awaited expansion to 32 teams. With it seeming more and more likely that the Athletics will end up in Vegas, I’m not going to lay my bets on that until a stadium is actually built and that could still face legal challenges from Nevada voters, but at some point in the next five to eight years, I think it is clear that the league will finally expand. MLB had gone through an expansion boom, in part set off by controversial relocations. When the Giants and Dodgers left for the west coast, the expansion Mets were granted to put the National League back in the New York metro, since at that time the two leagues were two completely separate organizations who only faced one another in spring training exhibitions, the All Star Game and in the World Series. To keep the NL balanced, it gave the other franchise to Houston. The AL had a quickly arranged expansion that actually took place the prior year, one team becoming the Angels because the AL wanted a share of Los Angeles and the west coast, the other was the team that went to DC, literally replacing the team that relocated from DC that same season to become the Twins. It would be like the Athletics going to Vegas and the year they started playing in Sin City, the new expansion team began play back in Oakland.

The move to Oakland actually helped jump start the 1969 expansion that saw four teams come into MLB, two per league. The league originally aimed to expand in 1971, but threats against the antitrust protection baseball enjoyed from a powerful Missouri Senator jumped that timeline, so that one year after the Athletics left Kansas City for Oakland, they too would have an expansion replacement ready to go known as the Royals. KC would be joined in Seattle for the 1969 AL season, while San Diego and Montreal came on board for the NL. A year later, the Seattle team was gone, now to be known as the Milwaukee Brewers, who replaced the Braves in Milwaukee five years after they left for Atlanta which would lead to legal suits file by Seattle. That would in some way help as the spring board for yet another expansion in 1977 adding Seattle back into the fold, but the league needed another market. It was thought briefly that the other team would end up in the NL creating a 13-13 alignment, but after the Giants threatened move to Toronto went for not, the Toronto market would be the second team joining Seattle in the AL for 1977 creating a 14-12 alignment that fans growing up like me in the 1980’s would come to know. After adding ten franchises in 16 years from 1961 to 1977, with the Mariners, Royals, and Mets all as replacement teams for franchises that had picked up and moved on, things finally had settled down. The league saw one more relocation during this period as those replacement Senators who took DC after the original team became the Twins, 11 years later they too were gone and now known as the Texas Rangers.

While the league added ten teams in a period of less than two decades from 1961 to 1977, it would be just as long before the league expanded again, adding the Rockies and marlins in 1993. That expansion at the time was rightfully viewed as such a success, that the league began looking to add two more teams in the spring of 1994, but months later the strike would happen. The then Devil Rays and Diamondbacks would be awarded in 1995 to begin play in 1998. Both franchises have had periods of on field success, Arizona winning the 2001 World Series and Tampa Bay appearing in the 2008 and 2020 Fall Classics, results have been less robust at the gate, especially for the Rays. Early gate success could not be maintained by the Marlins, largely due to ownership decisions and despite a new ballpark opened in 2012 and two championships won in 1997 and 2003, there is genuine doubt about how Miami works long term, many have similar concerns and rightfully so about Las Vegas.

In terms of how the league aligned, it first split into a pair of six team divisions in each league in 1969. The AL took a purely geography oriented approach, the Angels, Oakland, Minnesota, Seattle, Kansas city and the White Sox out west, with Cleveland, Detroit, Baltimore, Washington, Boston and the Yankees in the east. The NL was more complicated, the Cubs and Cardinals did not want to play in a western division, so they were put in the east with the Mets, Montreal, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, Cincinnati and Atlanta would be shipped west to join Houston, the Dodgers, San Francisco and the new San Diego franchise.

IN 1970 when the Seattle Pilots went to Milwaukee, they would stay in the west, but they would be shifted to the east in 1972 when the Washington franchise moved to Texas, putting that team in the west. Fortunately unlike the NFL, baseball did not decide to keep its Dallas Fort Worth based franchise in an eastern division, something now seemed forever locked in stone for the Cowboys because of historic rivals with the New York, Philadelphia and Washington franchises.

When Toronto and Seattle were added in 1977, they simply joined their corresponding divisions in the AL. it would be the 1993 NL expansion that again sparked controversy. When the first expansion resulting in new divisions happened in 1969, both leagues went to an unbalanced schedule. But after the AL expanded to 14 teams in 1977, it switched to a truly balanced slate in 1979 which resulted in 78 division games, 13×6 and 84 against the other division, 12×7. The NL considered both an extreme unbalanced schedule and a balanced one for 1993 when it grew to 14 teams, ultimately deciding on taking the same approach used by the AL. So division assignment didn’t impact the amount of play you would have against any franchise. Nonetheless, there was a desire to try and create a regional rivalry between Atlanta and the new Miami franchise. The only problem of course, if you put the Braves in the east with the Marlins, the Cubs or Cardinals would have to go west and those two would never play in different divisions and both were still opposed, even though now with the balanced schedule, you would have had the same amount of trips out west no matter your division assignment. So when 1993 opened, Atlanta and Miami were in different divisions.

Then on September 9, 1993, there was a surprise announcement at least to me, as I did not have a sense that this was coming. Realignment in MLB unlike any other sport always seemed to spark great debate and boy did it when the league shared it’s new format that would go into effect for 1994. A balanced schedule would remain, but now the league would have three divisions and those division winners would be joined by a single wild card in each league to create an added round of playoffs. Both league’s would have a four-team western division and five-teams in the central and eastern groupings. Since the AL was geographically oriented already, what it ended up with was very reasonable, Seattle, Oakland, the Angels and Texas out west, Kansas city, Minnesota, the White Sox, Milwaukee and Cleveland in the central, Toronto, Detroit, Boston, Baltimore and the Yankees in the east. Cleveland is actually further east than Detroit, but since Cleveland was always viewed as the smaller market, I suspect that was why the league chose to put it in the grouping with other Midwest markets.

The NL would see Colorado remain out west with the Dodgers, San Francisco and San Diego. The Cubs and Cardinals would now move to a new central division, joined by Houston, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. Geographically speaking, Atlanta would have made more since, because Pittsburg valued its rivalry with Philadelphia. But Atlanta, not Pittsburgh would be sent east with Montreal, the Mets, Philadelphia and the Marlins.

When baseball announced it was adding two teams for 1998, the realignment fuse was immediately lit. would both teams go to one league or the other, would baseball go to 15-15 since interleague play was now becoming more and more of a possibility? The debate only grew when the league confirmed that in deed, interleague play would begin starting with the 1997 season. Teams would face the interleague opponents from their corresponding geographic division from the other circuit. But then a firestorm blew up in early August, when reporting on the 6th of that month indicated that the league would continue interleague play but wanted to move to a NBA style conference alignment for 1998. The AL would stay at 14 teams, but now would be home to all of the clubs in the eastern time zone, so while Boston, the Yankees, Baltimore, Detroit, Toronto and Cleveland would remain, all other teams would be switched to the NL, while the expansion Tampa Bay team and the NL franchises from Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Montreal, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Miami and the Mets would come to the AL. The NL would be all teams outside the eastern zone and would become a 16 team circuit, the existing Dodgers, San Francisco, San Diego, Colorado, Houston, St. Louis and Cubs franchises would be joined by the new Arizona team and the eight AL franchises coming over, the Angels, Oakland, Seattle, Texas, Milwaukee, the White Sox, Minnesota and Kansas City would complete the arrangement.

This approach was universally panned by media and fans alike and never really seemed to gain much support inside baseball. What was made clear, each league wanted one of the two new franchises and the owners were not big on the idea of interleague play all the time, which a 15-15 arrangement would require. So this meant that that the AL would get Tampa Bay, the NL Arizona and someone from one of the two leagues would have to switch. Kansas city was offered the chance to do so and declined, so ultimately the team that did so, the Brewers, who were after all owned by the man that had taken over by force the leadership of MLB as acting and later confirmed Commissioner. Many viewed Milwaukee switching as the obvious choice, while the Brewers had a run of some success years earlier as an AL team, the best years of Milwaukee baseball were associated with the Braves and the NL.

When the league finally did decide to go to 15-15 interleague play, they didn’t move the Brewers back to the AL, instead moving Houston, a move widely hated by Astros fans at the time. The idea was to boost a rivalry with the Rangers, but then if that was the argument baseball was going to make, what about Pennsylvania with the split between the Pirates and Phillies?

In 2012, MLB would add a second wild card to the playoffs in each league, the division winners got a bye and the two wild cards played a single elimination game to decide who would advance into the main playoff rounds with the division winners. Then in 2022, the format changed to three wild card teams per league, but now this meant the weakest of the division winners also had to play in what was now a best of three wild card round, only the top two teams in terms of division winners went to the main draw of the playoff tournament.

When MLB expands to 32, I am sure there are some who will want to keep three wild cards and go to four divisions of eight, creating a system where only the best division winner advanced and everyone else has to play it off. I’m personally very much against this idea. Sending 6 of 16 teams to the playoff in each league is more than enough, otherwise why play a 162 game regular season? Baseball does not need to be the NBA or NHL. Baseball like hockey already has a degree of more random outcomes that will happen in playoffs because of how the sport is played. Assuming the current system was kept, this would mean two division winners in each league got a bye and two more would join two wild card teams with the division winners hosting all those games. But is that fair, do you want a 91 win wild card playing on the road at an 80 win division champion? This is almost certain to happen at some point if the league goes to four divisions of four teams in each league. So what I would propose, is that the league go back to two divisions, have eight teams in each division. The two division winners then have the reward of finishing first and getting a bye, the next four teams in each league get wild cards. Since the league is wanting to have a more balanced schedule and have everyone play everyone, it would make since to have a schedule that was a bit like what we now have this year. To make that work, you would play 16×3 for 48 interleague games, that leaves 114 league games to schedule. I would propose scheduling 58 games against the opposite division, 6×7 and 2×8, which leaves 56 games to play within the same division, 7×8. This would also almost assure you that a team with a losing division record would not make it to post season. What I fear though is that MLB will want more division champions and more playoffs, so I see a situation where they will have four divisions in each league and only the best team would avoid the wild card, but while the union would be all about creating two new franchises, I hope they stand firm on no more post season expansion beyond 12 teams.

If we do have an eight division four team setup, the scheduling would work similar to what we have now. The interleague portion would again be 16×3 for 48 total games, with play against the other divisions within the same league now adjusted to 4×6 per division, which totals out to 12×6 for 72 games, leaving 42 division games and 3×14 gets you to that number.

How the league might align when we go to 32, we can’t anticipate that yet because the answer is not known on where those two new expansion teams will play, much less the final resolution of what becomes of the future homes for both the Athletics and Rays. You can be confident in this, what ever realignment proposals gain public knowledge, they will be debated with great passion by fans, players and the media alike. Remember this kind of talk when the NFL realigned by going to 32 in 2002 and flipping Seattle from the AFC to the NFC? I didn’t think so.

There are various times where the process of accessing baseball information and following the teams and games you want has changed, mostly for the better in my lifetime.

ESPN was part of that process in 1990 when it gained televised rights for Major League Baseball. Remember that there was a time, through about 1997 when ESPN would intentionally carry every team in the league on its airwaves at least once or twice during the season. No matter where you lived, if you watched ESPN baseball, you would see the teams that were not performing well at least once or twice each season, the Royals, Athletics, Expos, Pirates and Twins among them.

As baseball became more available through a variety of sources, thanks in part to the internet, ESPN changed and only showed the popular teams, normally the big six, Cubs, Giants, Yankees, Red sox, Mets and Phillies with some Braves and Angels mixed in. but over time, with developments in mobile technology and social media, you could follow baseball exactly as you wanted it.

By 2021, if you were willing to pay up, you could watch any team online or listen to them via a variety of streaming platforms, get updates from fans and reporters on Twitter and other social platforms and feel like you were right there with all the fans.

But one experience has become worse in recent years. Streaming for obvious reasons has delays and most studies have shown that those delays are 15-20 seconds at a minimum. Since I’m a blind fan and I prefer the audio route, those delays were reasonable. You heard the result of the play via the online stream which I always obtained via the MLB provided streaming audio service through its website and app by the time sothers had a chance to post about it online or the update came through from MLB or ESPN about the play.

No longer is this true. IN 2022, Audacy took over the MLB service provided to fans from the league. The service quality has gone way, way down in numerous ways. The worst of them, significant audio delays. The Audacy audio feed is always 65 to 80 seconds behind the same audio streamed via the MLBTV overlay of the same audio broadcast. So this is not an issue with the feed itself, it is an issue with how Audacy processes the feed. Worse, Audacy inserts local advertising during the every break and sometimes, the system brings you back several seconds later than the standard broadcast came back, creating even more of a delay. Sometimes, the commercial spots keep playing and you are not returned to live action until the inning is all but over. So if you are a fan like me who likes keeping up with what is going on in baseball when I’m in a baseball following mood, that means either don’t follow a thing online and turn off all updates so the broadcast isn’t spoiled because it is so behind, don’t listen to a damn game at all unless you can get it on your local radio station, hent many large towns have no MLB affiliates anymore, or just enjoy the game being spoiled play, after play, after play. I have not even mentioned the other major issue with the Audacy provided service, with audio skipping back 20-40 seconds at times and repeating what I just heard, or skipping ahead a few seconds at random and missing a play all together.

For those who wondered about other services, TuneIn is even further behind the Audacy provided feed, the same is true for Sirius-XM which I recently added to my phone since my wife has the subscription, it will serve as the replacement for all other sports audio programs. With the other sports, I never have had any regular in game updates and I don’t even get an alert about the final score of the game, so its not an issue if I listen to an NBA, NHL or NFL game, though I’d still have to stay off social media as with Sirius-XM, I’m nearly two full minutes behind the action. But when it comes to baseball, I’m going to have to just give up something I guess, because the listening experience has been forever ruined.

This could be resolved of course, MLB could go back to operating the service the way it once did, taking the feed directly from the teams and giving you a service that was 15 or 20 seconds behind live radio, not a service that is more than a minute behind the streamed MLBTV feed and nearly 90 seconds behind live radio. A friendly hent for those at MLB, the local advertising inserted by Audacy, well it’s not providing the benefit you thought it would. Here in Austin where I live, having listened to more than six hours of streamed baseball on the MLB app this weekend, I heard numerous spots for the same five companies and organizations, Repipe.com, TheSource.org, a promotion for the local Salvation Army, a promotion from Austin Public Health about Mental health awareness and a store that sells lots of alcoholic spirits called Specs. A few times I’d hear an advertisement for a local car dealer an a couple times there were spots for major national chains like Lowe’s, but those were few and far between.

The approach Sirius takes, while the delays are even worse than MLB is to insert promotions about its offerings during local network breaks, the rest of the time it takes the network feed. Sirius-XM rather than taking the feed from the radio station such as the Giants KNBR is taking the feed from the Giants satellite distribution that radio affiliates use.

So the experience of enjoying baseball on the internet has taken a huge step back. It is better than no baseball, but the quality of the offering has struck out. Since the MLB service has become so difficult to use, I have for now canceled my subscription that would have renewed in 2024, I’ll take the even longer delayed Sirius-XM app feed if it’s a feed that at least works and I guess I’ll just turn off all of the notifications and avoid any social media during live baseball.

Remember the line from that 80’s song that goes: “My future’s so bright, I’ve got to wear shades”. Well modern baseball in terms of what we think of as Major League Baseball has a bright present and future in terms of the active young players in the sport and the many highly thought of prospects who are coming up the pipeline. Unfortunately for fans of the top baseball league in the world, it’s tone deaf Commissioner, who is playing the roll of corporate spin stooge as the owners mouth peace to the hilt, faces a very grim future. The League AKA cartel and many of the franchise owners, blinded by misguided business practices and modern corporate greed that would make Standard Oil proud, have no care in the world that they are running the league into a deep ditch like a freight train flying off vandalized railroad tracks on a dark western desert night.

When MLB first announced in August 2014 that Rob Manfred would be the new Commissioner, there seemed to be some thought that he might try some new ideas that could move the sport forward from its well owned label as a stick in the mud business that never made change unless change was forced upon it, tying itself to tradition so tightly that it certainly at times left itself more screwed over than it otherwise might have been. Clearly now, that was a false hope born out of master spin doctoring. If anyone could have managed to become so hated, by fans of all teams, from all political viewpoints in a way Manfred has, I can’t think of who that equivalent would have been in recent times.

After the news broke about the Astros cheating scandal that caused some to wish that the 2017 championship trophy be taken away from the franchise, Manfred referred to it as a hunk of metal. Even if true in every manner of speaking, no smart business leader says something so dumb sounding on its face. It was if he totally was missing the point of why fans were wishing for such an action to be taken, even if he knew it would be impossible for the league to do so. When Georgia passed some very flawed voting restrictions in the view of many, Manfred and the league chose to move the 2021 All Star game from Atlanta to Colorado, something panned by many Braves fans even on the political left as it certainly did have a negative impact on local business that needed an excuse to bring people back coming out of phase one of the covid pandemic.

But those were not even Manfred Man’s greatest hits, as he kept blinding himself with more bright lights that shown upon him for being the chief officer of Major League Bungling. His league’s response when it locked the players out in December 2021, immediately remove all references to the players and any likeness of them from all MLB owned league and team websites and resources. Talk about a move that went over like a lead balloon. Then as the lockout was genuinely threatening to cut deep into the 2022 season at an early March press conference, he appeared to actually be laughing about the situation facing baseball, another dumbass look.

Now we come to 2023, he and his cartel have been proven time and again to be chief masters of gas lighting. Why the A’s should go to Vegas, because Oakland wasn’t trying, accept Oakland had a better offer in terms of dollars on the table than what the no good Athletics owner swindled out of Nevada this week. He mocked the fans who attended the reverse boycott game, saying they had enough to equal an average MLB crowd for this season, something on that night that was larger than the crowds attending games hosted by the Royals, Orioles, Rangers, Mariners, and Diamondbacks. He also referenced the stadium situation with the diamondbacks and weeks earlier made similar comments about the Brewers. Manfred clearly believes that public financing of stadiums is good, even though numerous economic studies from all sides of the spectrum have proven this to be a lie. After all, if building a stadium were such a great guarantee of more revenue, then damn it all why wouldn’t the wealthy billionaire owners of the teams just build the facilities themselves? Think about it. It is a classic case of a rich corporate class wanting all the benefits and no risk, saddling the society with all the risk and the debts. Ask cobb county Georgia how their recent experiment with the Braves is working out?

But Robby boy couldn’t stop there, he then sticks is foot further down his throat by saying when it came to pride events, that the teams should do what they can to not make the players uncomfortable by putting logos on uniforms promoting the event. Jesus Mary and Joseph, what the hell are the logos about the US military like for some who have opposed the actions of our government, or logos of police and fire units when some rightfully have questioned the practices of American law enforcement. What about the Mother’s Day Breast Cancer marketing in conjunction with the Coleman Foundation, one of the worst rated when it comes to charities and an organization with a history of being hostile to women’s groups who don’t subscribe to a far right Christian agenda. Rob, let me spell it out for you, if the pride events make players uncomfortable, let them live with the discomfort and learn something, otherwise get rid of the logos that support the military, cops, cancer organizations, hell even the Jackie Robinson 42 logos because you will offend the closet racists that play in your league.

There are other things that are coming out just this week too that make Manfred and the men who run this league look so penny wise and pound foolish. They want to cap spending on technology, limit the number of staff a team can hire, all in the name it would seem of cost cutting while trying to give the false appearance of promoting a balanced league. Memo rob, these owners are worth billions, the sport brings in 11 billion in revenue each year and even after deducting player salaries, there are still nearly 7 billion dollars in revenue that remain. The league would be more balanced if owners were actually trying to win.

Manfred is making it very difficult for fans of baseball to truly remain fans of its top league, where the best professional practitioners of the game come to perform. IN a separate piece that I will post later this weekend, I’m going to be making it very clear to Manfred and his cartel why going forward, I’m cutting back what I spend on anything that sends dollars to the league and its teams.

If we could just focus on the player’s, Major League Baseball has a future that is so bright, but deep dark forces that are being brought upon it by the people who operate the business side of the league are throwing serious shade on what we otherwise would experience with the players, as we are unable to just keep our eyes and minds focused on those bright stars on the green playing field.