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American Family Field
American Family Field
After a long offseason, we’re finally there: On Thursday the Brewers are scheduled to open the 2025 season in New York against the Yankees, the first of 162 games in a span of 185 days running through late September.
Brewers fans hoping to catch most or every game this season might notice the extension of a few trends from recent years: The Brewers are once again scheduled for a relatively high number of day games this season (66), up from just 49 as recently as 2017. Thursday has always been a light night for baseball but this year it’s even lighter than usual, with the Brewers playing just five-night games and having 13 off days. Finally, while the Brewers will keep fans up late a lot in the season’s early months, it levels off and they play just eight games with a first pitch at or after 8:30 p.m. this season. That’s down from eleven last season. Here’s the full breakdown of the season ahead:
Monday:
- Day Games: 3
- Night Games: 15
- Late Games: 2
- Off Days: 6
Regular Monday off days make sense in the MLB schedule template as teams wrap up one series on Sunday and sometimes don’t start a midweek series until Tuesday. This year, that happens less often for the Brewers than in any year since we started breaking down the schedule in 2017. However, there are just five times where the Brewers get a break on a normal Monday, plus one more for the All Star break.
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With Monday almost always being the start of a new series it’s also rarely an opportunity to play a day game. The Brewers’ three Monday matinees this season are all special occasions: Next week’s home opener, Memorial Day and Labor Day (more on that in a moment).
Tuesday:
- Day Games: 0
- Night Games: 22
- Late Games: 2
- Off Days: 2
As is almost always the case, fans who are busy on Tuesday nights will miss a large portion of the Brewers’ season. They’ll play in the evening or late evening hours on over 92% of the Tuesday nights between next week and September, accounting for almost 15% of their schedule for the entire season.
One of those Tuesday off days isn’t a “true” off day, as it’s the night of the All Star Game in July. The other one is an unusual schedule quirk in September: The Brewers open a series at home against the Phillies on Labor Day, which presumably would have been a day off if not for the holiday, then are off the next night before resuming the series with games on Wednesday and Thursday.
Wednesday:
- Day Games: 15
- Night Games: 9
- Late Games: 1
- Off Days: 1
Fans hoping to catch every Brewers game this season will need to keep their Wednesdays open, as those 15 Wednesday day games are the most they’ve played since at least 2016. They also play just three Wednesday night home games all season, and the first one isn’t until August 27.
While the Brewers often play early in the day on Wednesday, they do almost always play. For the fourth consecutive season their only Wednesday off day is during the All Star break.
Thursday:
- Day Games: 8
- Night Games: 5
- Late Games: 0
- Off Days: 13
This is the first time since we started tracking the schedule that the Brewers will have half of the in-season Thursdays off. They only play twice on Thursday in the entire month of May (which has five Thursdays this year) and after July 3 they have six consecutive Thursdays off.
Those five Thursday night games are actually the most they’ve played in a season since 2022. Three of them are sprinkled through the home schedule.
Friday:
- Day Games: 1
- Night Games: 23
- Late Games: 2
- Off Days: 1
The Brewers’ lone Friday off day this season is a “just in case” day, with an off day scheduled after the season opener on Thursday in case of inclement weather in New York (as of Monday morning the forecast suggests it won’t be an issue).
The Brewers’ only Friday day games usually come on trips to Wrigley Field, but that’s not the case this year. They’ll open a series with the Marlins with a 3:10 p.m. start on Friday, July 25 for “Pokemon Go Day.” The Brewers last played Friday daytime home games on Opening Day in 2012 and for the home opener in 2009, but haven’t had a Friday matinee during the season since doing it on the Fourth of July in 2008.
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Saturday:
- Day Games: 12
- Night Games: 14
- Late Games: 1
- Off Days: 0
This year’s schedule continues a relatively new trend back towards Saturday matinee baseball: From 2017-22 (including the original 2020 schedule) the Brewers were slated to play about two thirds of their Saturday games at night, but for the last three seasons it’s been a roughly even split. In the past teams have largely preferred Saturday matinees early in the year and Saturday nights later but this season there isn’t as much of a split.
Saturday is also the schedule that is probably least likely to be played as written before the season. If the Brewers are in contention, they may see more of their game times moved into national broadcast windows on this day, and if they’re less relevant than expected they might also see some games flexed out.
Sunday:
- Day Games: 27
- Night Games: 0
- Late Games: 0
- Off Days: 0
ESPN still has yet to announce most of their Sunday Night Baseball games past the first week in June, but we know that for at least the first 10 Sundays of the season the Brewers will not be featured. The Brewers haven’t entered the season scheduled for a Sunday night broadcast in any of the last three years.
Depending on their status in the pennant race at that point the Brewers’ possible most likely games to be moved to a Sunday night telecast are perhaps their July 20 game at Dodger Stadium or an August 10 home game against the Mets. If it’s not one of those it might be tough to get the Brewers onto the schedule late in the year, as from late June through the end of the schedule they have a Sunday game against the likely non-contending Rockies, two with the Marlins, two with the Nationals, two with the Reds, two with the Cardinals and one with the Pirates.