Tentative 2013 Schedule Attendance Boost For Some Teams
Major League Baseball hasn’t publicly released the tentative schedule for the 2013 season, but it has shared it with teams and the players union. And that means some information about baseball in 2013 has leaked out, intentionally or otherwise. There’s some very good news for some teams and some “what, are you kidding me” news for other teams, if good and bad news is measured by the expected effect on attendance.
First, a few reminders about overall changes coming in 2013. With the Astros move to the American League West, there will be 15 teams in each league. Typically, every team plays on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, with Mondays and Thursdays as travel and off days. That means most days of the season will see at least one interleague game. Fourteen National League teams will play each other. Same in the American League. The odd teams out in each league will play each other.
We’ve also heard rumblings that, with the addition of a second wild card, MLB will move to a more balanced intraleague schedule. The idea is that teams competing for the two wild card spots should be on relatively equal footing when it comes to strength of schedule. But the early news suggests that division rivals will continue to play more games against each other than against non-division teams in the same league.
The big headline on the 2013 schedule is news that the Yankees of the East and the Yankees of the West (formerly known as the Dodgers) will play each other in a four game home-and-home series: two games at Dodger Stadium, two games at Yankee Stadium. It will mark the first time the Dodgers have played at Yankee Stadium since the 1981 World Series. Yes, that’s right. Even though we’ve had interleague play since 1997, the Dodgers have never played an interleague series against the Yankees in New York. The AL East and NL West first hooked up in 2002, but the Dodgers missed playing the Yankees to fit in the series with “their natural rival,” the Angels.
The Dodgers hosted the Yankees for three-games series in 2004 and 2010. In 2004, those three games boasted the highest attendance at Dodger Stadium that season, save for the final game of the year against the Giants. The capacity at Dodger Stadium is 56,000, and the 2004 Yankees series averaged 55,080 in attendance per game. In 2010, the Dodgers reported attendance at each of the three Yankees games at exactly 56,000. The only game to reach that capacity mark was Opening Day. Giving the Dodgers a two-game series at home against the Yankees seems like a nice thank-you present from the league to the Dodgers’ new owners.
The seating capacity at new Yankee Stadium is 50,287. According to attendance information on Baseball-Reference, the Yankees haven’t had any regular-season sellouts since the new stadium opened in 2009. Not Opening Day. Not against the Red Sox or Mets. With the Dodgers’ New York roots, you’d have to imagine those two games will be sold out, if not very close. When the Giants, the other west coast team with historical roots in New York, played a three-game series at old Yankee Stadium in 2002, attendance averaged over 55,000 for each game. Sure, that Giants team featured Barry Bonds, but the 2013 Dodgers will have plenty of stars themselves. The Yankees will also host the Giants in 2013 if the tentative schedule holds. Those should also be sold out or near sold out games.
The NL Central will square off against the AL West, giving the Astros the chance to play against their former division foes. And those match-ups will get started right away, with the Reds hosting the Angels on Opening Day. That seen like an odd choice to kick off interleague play in 2013, but Reds fans are quite familiar with the Angels’ first baseman, who used to play for the division-rival Cardinals.
The Phillies, who led the majors in attendance in 2011 and remains in first this season despite the team’s poor record, gets no favors from the MLB schedule makers. After starting their season on the road in Atlanta, the Phillies return to Philadelphia for their home opener against . . . . the Royals. Of course! It makes so much sense. Well, there’s the Philadelphia-Kansas City-Oakland Athletics connection. Exactly. At least the Phillies get a four-game home-and-home series with the Red Sox, traditionally a huge draw on the road.
We’ll know more on expected winners and losers when the 2013 schedule is officially released, usually in mid-to-late September.
If they’re going to INSIST on having all these interleague games, they should at least schedule the previous year’s World Series contenders to face each other, and perhaps even to start the new season.
I’ve heard this suggestion before (start the season with last year’s World Series teams playing each other) and I must admit I don’t understand it for one second. Isn’t one of the great things about opening day that it’s a fresh start for everybody, after the long, intense battle of the postseason left no teams standing but two? Why would you want to go right back to that?
I kind of like what the NFL seems to do every year, which is have the Super Bowl winner play another marquee team that they didn’t just beat in the Super Bowl.
No they shouldn’t. The schedule should be fair, random and balanced each year. There should be ZERO predetermined match-ups.
Yea! Who could stand for MLB making their product more interesting?!? The randomness of the computer must reign over the interest-inflationary policies of a well run league!!!
And of course, they already handpick some series (like the a Reds home series to start the season). You wouldn’t need to force 2 teams to play, just pick an interesting series involving the World Series winner and place it on Opening Day.
Fair and random don’t go together. Random and balanced don’t go together. A fair schedule, and a balanced schedule, is one that has the same teams playing the same teams, the same amount, every year.
A “balanced” schedule is fundamentally unfair because it privilges geography. If everyone plays the same schedule, it seems fairer to the wild card contenders, but is totally unfair to have division champions.
You could solve this with a schedule with no leagues and no divisions. 30 teams, each playing 6 times against each other, no playoffs. Just call the first place team the champion.
Perfectly fair. Only problem is no one would watch.
Premier League style! Although this would never happen, I actually think it would be very entertaining. It would set baseball apart from other American sports, and with that many teams competing, the pennant races would be great to watch.
While some attendance trends may be projected from an early look at the schedules, I’d argue that it won’t really “hurt” Philly to have the Royals as their home opener. In most markets the first series of the season is going to be a sellout regardless, especially in the Philly market. So if you assume that they would have to host the Royals at SOME point during the season, better to go ahead and get it out of the way during a series that you are almost sure to sell out anyway.
I don’t think “most” teams sell out their entire home opening series, even when it’s also the season opening series. Opening Day is sold out everywhere (except Yankee Stadium, I guess?), and then attendance immediately begins to tail off from Game 2 on. That said, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Philadelphia did sell out their home opening series, given their usual attendance figures.
The Phillies sell out all their games. It matters not at all who they play for their opening series.
Something seems really “off” about not only having interleague play on day one, but having Cincy be involved, no less.
I actually like it. Cincy has a great opening day tradition (for anyone that doesn’t know, unlike other teams, Cincy always gets actual opening day at home) but it isn’t predicated on who they are playing or anything like that. It’s a distinction to be the first interleague opening day and having it in Cincy is actually kind of rad.
Interesting, but I can’t believe that a third of this article is devoted to a series that 90% of us do not care about.
The “90% of you” seem to control a significantly small part of the TV viewership and attendance in the league.
Why would they design a schedule which is more fair to Wildcard contenders? I thought the point of the extra wildcard was to make winning the division more meaningful. Thus, the schedule should be designed to make the divisional races fair, not the wild cards.
Rockies should have moved instead of the Astros.
It actually makes some sense to set up an Astros-Rangers rivalry, but the Astros are going to be destroyed in the AL West next year. The only advantage to them being in the AL is that if Roger Clemens comes back he’ll be able to pitch against all his old teams.
So balanced schedule in Interleague, but not balanced in your own league? I guess we’re halfway there.
Matchups and attendance are only part of the equation nowadays with dynamic pricing. A matchup versus the Yankees means quite a bit more than even a look at the attendance boost can provide, as that boost is at a premium price.
The Phillies schedule is already out there. Division opponents will play each other 19 games, up from 18. You play the other ten league opponents 6 or 7 games, but probably 33 games total against the other two divisions.
20 interleague games – 2 home/2 away played as a 4-game series if you have a local/regional rival. The Phillies and Red Sox will play a series like this. Then the 5 teams from another division–one of them 2 home/2 away, but not as a series, and 3-game series against the other four teams.
I think divisions are unneeded with the 5th playoff team. They should just play a close-to-balanced league schedule, plus 18 interleague games, and seed the top 5 of 15 in the right order. Teams from weak divisions shouldn’t be rewarded for their geography. The top 3 should make the playoffs, and the 4th and 5th best teams should play to get in.
On thing they need to consider when scheduling is equity in travel. West coast teams travel thousands of miles extra every year, with Seattle getting the brunt of this (The closest team to them is Oakland (800+miles). Putting Houston in the AL West is ridiculous. That is going to really rack up the frequent flyer miles for them. A more natural fit for the AL West is either Colorado, Sandiego, or Arizona.