Baltimore Orioles should schedule more doubleheaders

The Baltimore Orioles and other MLB teams should schedule traditional doubleheaders to shorten the season.

Yesterday I wrote about how the Baltimore Orioles and other MLB teams could one day find themselves playing a shorter schedule of 154 games for varying reasons. As I said at the time, I’m not in favor of shortening the season. Commissioner Rob Manfred’s idea is that it would cut down on injuries. However I’m not sure that trimming eight games would do much, if anything at all in that sense.

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However one aspect of the idea with which I do agree is to keep the World Series from going into November. Any world in which that is prevented is a decent one. Mind you, there could always be the possibility that it could seep into November if there’s a weather cancellation or something along those lines. But in my view World Series games should never be scheduled in the month of November.

So perhaps MLB should in fact dip into it’s past in order to solve this problem. However in doing so they shouldn’t go back to the 154-game schedule. They should return to the practice of scheduling doubleheaders.

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This is something that used to happen frequently. Teams would schedule a couple of doubleheaders throughout the season as a special treat for fans. Now the only time we see them are in the event that a rained out game can’t be made up at a future date or time.

There are two kinds of doubleheaders; the traditional kind are literally two games for the price of one. The teams play the first game, and then the second game starts 20-25 minutes after the culmination of the first game. However split-doubleheaders are literally two separate events, which require two different tickets. And in those cases the first game is usually in the early afternoon, with the night cap in the evening.

Years ago teams would schedule the traditional twin bills more often than not. So while players and coaches might not be totally on board or happy with the idea, would it be such a bad thing to go back to that concept? Mind you folks, we’re not talking about a lot of games in this case – maybe each team has two home and two road dates that have two games.

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That would be a total of eight games in four days, which saves four days on the schedule. It thus allows MLB to move it’s schedule up a few days across the board, which means teams can play their post season games earlier. Obviously this would have to be collectively bargained, which means that it would have to be clear if the deal would include traditional or split doubleheaders. My thought is that owners would rather have the split variety, so they don’t lose their gate revenues – which mind you they’d lose anyways if Commissioner Manfred truncates the season.

Next: Baltimore Orioles: Could MLB go to a 154-game schedule?

Whether any of this happens remains to be seen. It’s really tough to say, and whether or not it’s a good idea is another story. But a good idea is only such in the eye of the beholder.

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