Major League Baseball’s (MLB) 162-game season has become less a journey and more a grind. Long, expensive, and increasingly devoid of meaningful checkpoints. In recent years, the NBA has exposed a better way forward.
Opening Day still delivers its annual wave of optimism. By mid-April, that energy fades into a six-month stretch, where urgency is scarce and stakes are often missing. As teams spend the first three months figuring out what they are, fans are left wondering why any individual game should matter.
That ambiguity isn’t new. Even front office brass’ admits it.
Before the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf said:
“Our young players are not a finished product yet… we feel strongly we have a great core… but we don’t know what we have this year.”
That uncertainty exists every year, just stretched across 162 games.
Even for elite teams, the regular season often feels like a formality. The Dodgers, for example, are built for October. If their playoff spot is all but inevitable, what exactly are fans buying into on a random Tuesday night in June? A glimpse of Shohei Ohtani? A start from an ace who may be on a carefully managed workload?
Save It For The Playoffs
Cy Young contenders, or in the case of Blake Snell, a two-time winner, are so mindful of load management, that the fans are rarely, if ever treated to a performance beyond five innings.
Similar to how NBA stars might have formerly been sitting in street clothes at courtside during a regular season game in mid-January. Now commonly, the top players in baseball are often treated to day off now and again during for example, a four-game series in the middle of a 12-game road trip.
Fans travelling from afar, might be left rolling the dice as to whether their favorite player will be in the lineup that day. Pitchers especially, are often caught in a revolving door between a solidified role in the rotation, and short stints on the injured list.
Rationale for these designations are not always disclosed from the side of the ballclub. That leaves the media to speculate and offer unsubstantiated sound bites as to what’s actually going on behind the scenes.
Then there’s the cost-benefit equation, which no longer makes sense. Tickets, parking, concessions—it adds up quickly. Especially for families. The 162-game model has unfairly shifted. The schedule used to work because games were accessible and frequent. Now they’re frequent, but no longer accessible.
