LONDON — As Major League Baseball looks to expand its presence in Europe and play more games abroad, a solution to doing that in the middle of a season could playing fewer games overall.
“There are things that could be done in the schedule in order to create more window of an opportunity for play here,” commissioner Rob Manfred said. “There’s been conversation over the years about 154 (games) as opposed to 162. That would be an easy alternative.”
Cardinals chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. has advocated for a 154-game schedule in past years, and that was before the postseason expanded by round after round, adding more games to the final month of the championship season.
A 154-game schedule was the length of the Major League Baseball schedule for decades before growing to the modern 162. It was the expanded calendar that once led to an asterisk in the record books beside Roger Maris' 61 home runs, because he did not play in the same 154-game slate as Babe Ruth.
The owners attended a presentation on the value of a 154-game schedule as recently as 2020, and it briefly came up as a point of discussion in 2022's lockout and labor negotiations.
“I personally am in favor of a shorter season regardless of what the playoff structure is,” DeWitt told the Post-Dispatch in February 2020. “I think 162 games is a lot of games. I’m an advocate for going back to 154. It’s a grind. There’s a lot of travel. So, I’m probably in the minority of that but when I have an opportunity to speak up about it, I do speak up about it. I prefer a shorter schedule.”
A change of the schedule would have to be collectively bargained with players’ union, and any move to reduce games would prompt the MLBPA to assure it does not mean a reduction in salaries from the current structure.
In recent negotiations with the owners, the players' union has increased the off days in the regular season and established some policies to address travel, which has only increased with the change that assures all 30 teams will play each other at least once during the regular season.
In London, Manfred specifically mentioned how Major League Baseball in the coming years plans to play in Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. A Paris series is possible for 2025.
The Cardinals, who will play in Birmingham, Ala., at Rickwood Field in 2024, are interested in a series in Japan. They have a working relationship with the Orix Buffaloes, where So Taguchi is a coach in Japan's highest league, and outfielder Lars Nootbaar was a breakout player and media star for Team Japan in the World Baseball Classic.
Fewer games on the schedule would give the schedule (and those MLB World Tour visits) room to breathe — and players room to roam.
When traveling to Asia or Australia for regular-season games, teams have done so at the beginning of seasons, while other clubs are still in spring training. The result is a chance to visit, sightsee and recover. Thus far, Europe presents another puzzle. The seasons and “weather is a really limiting factor,” Manfred said. The current home to the London Series, London Stadium, is a facility without a roof, and so too is the site MLB is measuring to host Paris games.
The weather factor puts series in Europe during summer, in the middle of the regular season, and leaves teams like the Cubs and Cardinals a limited window to do more more than play the games. The Cardinals had a scheduled dinner cruise Thursday, an optional gala on Friday, and two games before leaving London on Sunday evening. Players made time for tourism when they could, and if anything, the players suggested that they had to rush to do so. More time in London would have opened up possibility of other events with players, such as clinics, and given them time to do more than a 72-hour sprint through one of the world’s largest cities and then back home to another series.
“We like the start-the-season idea because it does give you flexibility in spring training, it gives players time to recover after travel,” Manfred said. “Absolutely necessary going to Asia. We see Europe differently. The flight is not all that much worse than east to west (that) we do all the time. We have to play here at a point in time where we have some degree of certainty about the weather. (That could change) over time if the game grows in popularity here the way we hope it does.”
