House That Hank Built
Fansided

Atlanta Braves schedule: how many games will be lost?

By Alan Carpenter

AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND - JUNE 14: Departure boards show cancelled or delayed flights out of Auckland as fog blankets Auckland Airport causing flight delays on June 14, 2019 in Auckland, New Zealand. For the second day in a row, a heavy fog hovers over Auckland Airport causing significant delays and cancellations. (Photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images)
AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND - JUNE 14: Departure boards show cancelled or delayed flights out of Auckland as fog blankets Auckland Airport causing flight delays on June 14, 2019 in Auckland, New Zealand. For the second day in a row, a heavy fog hovers over Auckland Airport causing significant delays and cancellations. (Photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images) /
facebooktwitterreddit
Prev
2 of 3
Next
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA: A screen showing a rain delay message is seen during a rain delay in the ICC Women’s T20 Cricket World Cup match between Pakistan and Thailand on March 03, 2020 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA: A screen showing a rain delay message is seen during a rain delay in the ICC Women’s T20 Cricket World Cup match between Pakistan and Thailand on March 03, 2020 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images) /

The 2020 Quandry

That season was messed up due to self-induced labor issues, clearly not matters beyond the control of either the team owners or the union as we have before use today.

Right now, there are two possibilities being floated: Memorial Day weekend and ‘July’, the latter of which gives rise to either July 1st (roughly) or after the All-Star break (that game now scheduled for July 14 in Los Angeles).

The Atlanta Braves had 57 games scheduled through the start of Memorial Day weekend (games 58-60 at Seattle beginning May 29).

If you run that into July, we’d be looking at a loss of 27 more games (87 total) through July 1st and 10 more prior to the All-Star Break: 97 overall.

That latter date means very nearly 60% of the schedule would have passed.

Contingencies

MLB could ‘buy back’ a few more games by doing the following:

1. Play all the way through the month of October, adding perhaps 31 games through the 35 days starting ending on Sunday, November 1st. Games scheduled for that month could be selected from a portion of the canceled schedule… perhaps from parts originally slated for April 3rd through onward.

2. Reduce the number of off-days that had been negotiated into the last CBA. That might bring back one more game per month over July-September: 3 total.  However, such a move would guarantee a total schedule revamp, which is likely a very difficult proposition… it’s not like you could simply tack another random game onto a series from the existing schedule.

It’s doubtful that there would be a lot of sentiment to reduce a layer of the playoffs to end the season more quickly.

All parties involved are clearly going to lose big money this year regardless; thus also wiping out a part of the most lucrative portion of the schedule seems a bad idea – particularly if there is a choice in the matter.

So now let’s make some guesses about what these options could do…

Home/Braves News