MLB schedule making?

Question

How do they determine how many games against opponants one team plays. The Red Sox for instance. They play the teams in they're division 19 times. Then I thought they played other AL teams one home and one away series. But they are going to Seattle for they're second time coming up, and I don't understand that.

Answer 1

First, it's the D-Rays, not the D-Backs, whom they play 19 times. (The D-Backs are in the NL West).

Second, let's start at the base. This year, each team plays17 to 19 games against teams in its own division and six to nine games against teams outside its division. AL West teams play nine games against each team outside its division, because there are only four teams in the division. Conversely, NL Central teams only play six games per team outside the division, because there are six teams in that division. During interleague play, each team plays 18 games against teams in the other league, except for teams in the NL Central, which play 12 interleague games a year.

So that's why Boston plays Seattle more than the standard 7 times. The other thing I forgot to mention is that teams during interleague play have "rivalry matchups" where they play a certain team more based on that team's natural rivalry. The Yankees play the Mets for obvious reasons, the Cardinals play the Royals (lucky bastards) and the Sox, for some strange reason, are natural rivals with the Phillies. It would make much more sense for the Sox to be natural rivals with the Braves (the Atlanta Braves were once the Boston Braves way back in the early 1900s) but you can't have your cake and eat it too, I guess.

Answer 2

One of the most endearing and best things about baseball has always been its balance. Every team in each league played every other team in their league the same number of times per season and when they won a pennant or a playoff spot they had actually earned it. But that was before they switched it to an unbalanced schedule
Supportes of the idea tell you that it keeps a team much more regional and allows them to play more games against division rivals. Supposedly this generates a large amount of local interest and increases ticket sales and viewership. This may in fact be true in a few cases: the Giants-Dodgers, Yankees-Red Sox and Cubs-Cardinals but for most teams without that kind of longstanding rivalry does it really increase interest in the game.

So I can see why you don't understand that, and it is a very stupid idea, they should definitely change it

Answer 3

They play the Yanks, Jays, Orioles and Dbacks 19 times each, 76 games total. They played 18 interleague so that takes us up to 94 games. That leaves 68 games to play against the other 9 AL teams so it comes out uneven. I see they went to Oakland twice as well and only hosted them once. I don't see anyone that visited them twice to even this out but I didn't comb the whole schedule and home/away have to be even.