A Way Too Early Breakdown of the Minnesota Twins 2023 Schedule

This will be a tougher schedule than we have played in recent years. Maybe it's just the losing mentality of the last week, but I see lots of Ls when I look at it.

Getting fewer against KC and DET is not good for Twins baseball (neither is going back to Chavez Ravine)

We are looking forward to next season already? Might as well.

They have a choice, learn to beat the Yankees and Dodgers like Kansas City and other bottom rank teams did or be the laughing stock of baseball from fly over country.

I have enough old school in me that I have mixed feelings about playing every NL team. On the one hand, it's fun to play someone "different" now and again. And while I enjoy inter league play, I've always embraced at least some separation between the leagues. But the NFL and NBA haven't had such stringent scheduling restrictions for years, so it's probably time to open things up a little more now, especially with the universal DH.

I greatly dislike the Brewers match ups being mid week games. Each should be a 3 game weekend series for the sake of the fans for both teams, PERIOD. 

I also dislike so few games within the division late in the year. It takes away from potential excitement for a divisional run. To me, there has always been a lot if interest in 2, or even 3, teams going down to the wire the last month of the season to see who comes out on top of the division. Forget scoreboard watching, I want to see those teams play against one another with the division on the line.

I don't know that this new schedule necessarily is necessarily "harder" on the Twins, or anyone else. Maybe. But there are "poor" teams in each league and every division. And at the end of the day the goal remains the same, win your division, and then shoot for a WC if you don't do that.

Where I DO see a potential pitfall is a WC chase. There remains a financial discrepancy...not to be fixed any time soon...between markets. Now, those discrepancies aren't exact, and even some large market teams are simply bad at times. Money available doesn't always equate to success. Witness the Orioles and Angels as examples. But it could make the WC a little harder.

Making up road game rainouts is going to be a real problem with the “play every team” schedule.   

OK, here's a quirk that causes dissonance in the symmetry portion of my brain:

The schedule would exactly accommodate 14 games against each division opponent, 6 games against each non-division team in the same league, and 3 games against each team from the other league with the exception of 4 games in the so-called rivalry series. Almost perfect symmetry, 162 games. Pleasing.

But instead, the schedule calls for 13 intra-division games and 64 games against other teams from the same league. As a result, home-and-home within the division is unbalanced. It further means playing 7 games against 4 non-division teams in the same league and 6 games against the other 6. Disturbing.

Can we get an explanation for this distressing situation? I can even accept the explanation that it was done simply to bug me personally, but someone please tell us why.

Edited to add:

I just thought of one possible explanation. In the event of a tie-breaker being needed for postseason seeding MLB wants there to be an odd number of games against each of the other teams in a division. This is weak (IMHO) because I'd rather see a second tiebreaker used in the rare event of a 7-7 split. A small but worthwhile price to pay for symmetry.

On 8/24/2022 at 6:06 PM, Nick Nelson said:

...The Twins now just face each division opponent 12 times...

 

Incorrect. There are 13 games against each division opponent.

3 hours ago, Nine of twelve said:

OK, here's a quirk that causes dissonance in the symmetry portion of my brain:

The schedule would exactly accommodate 14 games against each division opponent, 6 games against each non-division team in the same league, and 3 games against each team from the other league with the exception of 4 games in the so-called rivalry series. Almost perfect symmetry, 162 games. Pleasing.

But instead, the schedule calls for 13 intra-division games and 64 games against other teams from the same league. As a result, home-and-home within the division is unbalanced. It further means playing 7 games against 4 non-division teams in the same league and 6 games against the other 6. Disturbing.

Can we get an explanation for this distressing situation? I can even accept the explanation that it was done simply to bug me personally, but someone please tell us why.

Edited to add:

I just thought of one possible explanation. In the event of a tie-breaker being needed for postseason seeding MLB wants there to be an odd number of games against each of the other teams in a division. This is weak (IMHO) because I'd rather see a second tiebreaker used in the rare event of a 7-7 split. A small but worthwhile price to pay for symmetry.

CDO* folks of the world unite. I completely agree with the perfect symmetry of the 14-6-3 (plus a fourth against the designated rival). I’d even seen the plan described that way in a few places.

Facetiousness aside, I do agree though that there doesn’t appear to be a logical reason not to do that, and it would be interesting to hear the rationale. You’ve come up with one, but I agree that it’s really weak if that’s the best explanation they can come up.

*Some folks refer to this as OCD, but I prefer to alphabetize the letters as they should be. 

From a Target Field attendance perspective, this schedule is terrible for Minnesota. With a number of "better drawing" teams coming to play the Twins either early in the season or in September when the weather is cooler and school is in session.

3 hours ago, jjswol said:

With a number of "better drawing" teams coming to play the Twins either early in the season or in September when the weather is cooler and school is in session.

Let me try to phrase this positively ... I don't think there will be much of a difference in attendance from the Spring to the Summer to the Fall next year with this club.

Baseball is dying with all shifts and extra inning gimmicks. I know next year some go away. Now this is the next great idea. They should have East Coast,Central,West Coast play each other. The fan base is losing interest because of cost of tickets and bad games. You get fans from Milwaukee coming to see Brewers,Twins, people from St Louis to see Cardinals,Twins. You don't see a lot of fans from the Braves,the Giants or Rockies.

5 hours ago, Otto von Ballpark said:

 

For example, perhaps an extra game against Baltimore in a particular series would allow the league to avoid scheduling the Twins for too many consecutive games or too long of a road trip elsewhere in the schedule?

The teams would have the same number of 3-game series and 4-game series either way. The only difference is who the opponents are. Teams fly between cities on almost every road trip anyway, so this is essentially a non-factor.

On 8/24/2022 at 7:06 PM, rv78 said:

We are looking forward to next season already? Might as well.

Because this year is quickly turning into a dud.

This seems a good place to post my more-readable version of the 2023 schedule... perhaps others will find it helpful!