Mother Nature's Fury

Mother Nature is notoriously fickle.  Early season baseball is especially susceptible to weather.  But this year has been worse than ever.  Winter's refusal to end has wreaked havoc on several teams' schedules.  It's a good thing that this is the first season with those extra off days.  Because they've needed them.

Some "highlights":

• The final three games of a four-game weekend set between the White Sox and Twins were postponed because of a blizzard in the Twin Cities
• The Cubs' home opener was snowed out...on a day when the White Sox were able to play their scheduled home game that night!
• The Tigers and Pirates were postponed on Opening Day, played the next day, were postponed again, and had to play their second and third games of the season as part of a doubleheader
• Even the Blue Jays, who play in a dome, had to postpone a home game because ice was falling off the CN Tower

Detroit has already had six home games postponed due to weather.  Minnesota has had four home games wiped out and went five days without playing from April 12-17, enough of a break to have the same starter pitch consecutive games (on regular rest!) had they so desired.

We're less than three weeks into the season, and there have already been 24 weather-related postponements.  There were six! on Sunday alone, including both ends of a Yankees-Tigers doubleheader, and three more on Monday.  The number of times this season in which all 30 teams have actually all played on the same day?  A grand total of three!

Of course, the ridiculously relentless winter in the Midwest and Northeast is to blame for most of this (it hasn't all been snow...there's been plenty of rain, too).  And, yes, this is abnormal.  The weather in April isn't usually this bad, and certainly not this late in the month.  And even when teams in the Northeast and Midwest have been able to play, it hasn't exactly been "comfortable."  But that's not really the issue.  That's what fans have come to expect in April and October.  The rash of postponements, though?  That's something different entirely.

This has led to the latest calls for everyone's favorite suggestion--shortening the season.  Today's USA Today had the most recent argument advocating the shorter season, citing not just this miserable April, but also the rain in Cleveland during the World Series two years ago.  They aren't just calling for 154 games, either.  They want to start later, end earlier, and chop 20 games off the season.  That's right.  142 games!

Now, this is ridiculous, unnecessary and never going to happen, so it's not even worth wasting our time discussing it.  And, while the weather in April is never great, this year has been an anomaly.  We could just as easily make it through April with just a handful of rainouts next season.  Let's not forget, either, that extreme weather isn't limited to early season games.  Both the Astros and Rays had home series relocated last season because of hurricanes--and that was in September!

Although, there is something that can be done about the schedule that has been brought to light by this rash of weather-related postponements.  It's a simple solution, really.  Front-load the schedule with division games.  This way, if you have games postponed, they're much easier to reschedule.  You can play a day-night doubleheader during one of the other series or, if you have an off day before or after, extend it by a day.

Teams visit each of their division opponents three times a season.  Non-division teams only visit once.  So, if a game gets postponed, the only options are to try and get in a doubleheader (which may be questionable if the weather won't cooperate) or find a mutual off day that works.  Or, in the case of the Yankees and Tigers, who had both ends of a doubleheader rained out on Sunday, playing that doubleheader on said mutual off day.

It's impossible for MLB to schedule only division games on a given day.  When everybody plays, there has to be at least three series that aren't, and one of those has to be interleague.  That's fine.  But you don't make the interleague series Pittsburgh at Detroit.  You make it Colorado at Houston.  And you don't have the Mariners' only visit to Minnesota in April.  You have it in July.

For teams like the Tigers and the Twins and Indians, they only get division home games in April.  For the interdivision and interleague games, use your domes.  Put them in Toronto or Milwaukee or Miami.  Or, better yet, in LA or Miami.  Save the non-division games for outdoor stadiums in cold-weather cities until later in the season.

Rain outs are something all baseball teams have to deal with over the course of the season.  You're not going to play a game on 162 days in 20 cities over the course of six months without it raining somewhere during that time.  And, when you only get 20 days off during that span, you'll want to do everything you can to preserve them.  So the schedule-makers could help out a little.  Make it easier to make up April postponements.  Make them division games.