No More Wednesday Baseball?

College baseball seems to be an ever changing landscape. One of the latest changes is to limit the schedule to 56 games for the regular season dropping down to 52 next season, and a start date of February. Much to the players chagrin, this seems to coincide with Mardi Gras, or at least very close to it. If you're an SEC team, and we're going to focus on Mississippi State for this article, you have 30 conference games, which leaves 26 non-conference games. In the past, a typical week for an SEC baseball player would be to play a game on Tuesday, play a game on Wednesday, and then have a three game series against another SEC team. It's probably very similar for players throughout the nation, to. One thing to keep in the back of your mind when you're reading this- Mississippi State fans love(d) the Saturday doubleheaders that they used to play in the 80's and early 90's in the SEC, which are no more.

With all of this in mind Mississippi State, and I imagine other teams will follow suit if they haven't already, are going to start scheduling fewer games on Wednesday, and then early in the season, schedule what amounts to be four game series- a Friday game, a doubleheader on Saturday, and a Sunday game.

So, here's the breakdown:

30 SEC games, presumably 15 at home and 15 on the road.

3 games in Jackson- The Governor's Cup, a game against Southern Mississippi, and a game against Jackson State.

4 games against another major conference team on a weekend before SEC play.

3-4 games in either a pre-season tournament or against a major/mid-major team.

4 games to open the season in a round-robin tournament against 1-2 mid-major teams.

For those keeping score at home, we're at 40-41 games, which leaves 11-12 games left. In MSU's case, this is going to amount to a maximum of 3-4 games on Wednesday during the season.

My take- I like it. And there are several reasons why. Word from the MSU camp is that they are doing it so that their players will miss fewer classes. I'm sure the players appreciate that. I don't think that's the entire intention, though.

More money for schools, in this case MSU. I'm going to be a little bit lazy here, but I feel pretty confident in saying that MSU makes more money on Sunday baseball than they do Wednesday baseball games, without doing any research. Having experienced both myself, I feel pretty certain, with the exception of Mississippi State playing Southern Mississippi in Starkville, or something else extra special that would attract fans, that this is the case. There are several reasons for this. Most people are more willing to travel on the weekend than the work week typically. While a lot of people in the South do church activities on Sunday, there is going to be a certain segment of the attendance that are going to be people that say, "Hey, we're here anyway, let's catch the last game before we go home." During the midweek, if you actually choose to go to a game, the thought process is- "I need to leave work early, and I need to plan on getting home late". Doing that two nights in a row is going to be brutal on anyone, and the other option is to call in sick the next day, which a lot of people don't want to spend on Mississippi State vs. Samford. What the four game schedule is going to do is this- you will have a pretty good crowd on Friday, then most of the people will go to both games on Saturday- so now the school is getting two for one for the most part- and then you have your Sunday game which is essentially replacing a Wednesday game, and now you're getting a larger crowd for that game than you typically would had the game been on Wednesday. But money isn't everything here. There are some other good reasons, like this one.

Better competition for your fourth/midweek starter. I think this is as valuable as anything. How many times have we watched the regionals, and a good team will get in the losers bracket, and then they get in an elimination game and have to pitch their midweek guy in the most important game of the year against Arizona State, and the best team he has faced all year was Memphis. Go get em! The four game schedule is a perfect opportunity to get the midweek pitcher a chance to pitch agianst a high caliber opponent. If your midweek pitcher has pitched against a team like, say Texas during the regular season, and performed reasonably well, that's going to be something that the pitcher can potentially draw off of during the postseason, when he, and your team really needs it. Also, most teams don't have their rotations set in February, and this is a much better gauge of who should be in the weekend rotation. And there's one more very good reason for scheduling like this.

More time for the coaches to recruit players.There were several times that Nick Hardy became the stand-in first base coach for MSU. Why? Because some of the other coaches were out recruiting. Obviously, you can't be two places at one time. So, this is going to allow the coaches to coach the midweek games- which they really need to do, because sometimes those midweek games can determine whether you go to a regional or stay home, or even host. They're important. I also won't debate that recruiting is important as well. This schedule is going to allow the coaches to do their jobs better.

So, get ready for the for the four game series starting this spring. And now, you'll have more time to watch the Wednesday Night Baseball Game on ESPN. I'd say that's a win/win.