It was clear from the beginning that the 2020 Major League Baseball season would have some unprecedented hurdles to clear, but the schedule is turning out to be a pretty big one.
The first full week of MLB action saw plenty of disruptions, as six teams had entire series wiped out due to pandemic concerns. The Brewers were one of the six, having their entire first home weekend against the Cardinals postponed. Making those games up could pose an interesting challenge, if Major League Baseball forces teams to do so: The two teams aren’t scheduled to be in the same place at the same time until September. Fitting those games into the schedule will require the Brewers to play 26 times in the season’s final 27 days, and that’s assuming no other games are postponed and need to be made up in that window.
Of course, some other teams have it much worse. The Marlins have played just three of their ten scheduled contests to date and will have been off for eight days by the time their season is scheduled to resume on Tuesday. It’s unclear how or if all this missed time will be made up in their compressed schedule, or if MLB should even ask them to try at this point. Even with concessions like seven inning games in doubleheaders, that’s a lot of baseball to fit into a short amount of time.
While 2020 has presented baseball with all kinds of unprecedented challenges, however, busy schedules aren’t an entirely new phenomenon. For much of baseball history a lot of games were compressed into the middle months of the season, allowing teams to start later in April but still play a full slate. Here are some occasions from Brewers franchise history with the busiest agendas:
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
August 1977
The busiest month in Brewers franchise history, the 1977 team played 34 games in 31 days in August. Amazingly enough, 33 of these contests appeared on the original schedule, with one makeup game added later when a May game in Cleveland was cancelled due to cold weather. That game created one of the rougher road trips any team will ever experience: The Brewers played a Sunday doubleheader at home, then flew to Detroit for four games in three days and continued on to Cleveland for five games in three days.
Three different Brewers played in all 34 games that month: Cecil Cooper, Robin Yount and Don Money. Yount was actually a little better at the plate during this marathon stretch (batting .305 with a .350 on-base and .389 slugging) than for the season as a whole. Reliever Eduardo Rodriguez pitched eleven times in the month and threw 41 1/3 innings with a 3.48 ERA.
September/October 1969
The expansion Seattle Pilots’ last month in their original city was a long one: They played 33 times in the season’s final 32 days and coupled it with a grueling travel schedule as they were hundreds of miles away from their nearest American League rival. From September 1-17 of that season they played five doubleheaders against four different teams.
The Pilots’ schedule featured a lot of challenges but perhaps none worse than what they endured on September 12 and 13. On the first of those two days they were scheduled to play a doubleheader with the Angels, making up a rainout from July. The Angels won the first game 4-1, but the second game was still tied at 1 after nine innings and went to extras. Following the top of the tenth inning the game was suspended without a winner. The two teams played twice again the next day.
June/July 1975
The 1975 Milwaukee Brewers were one of the first teams in franchise history to flirt with contender status. At one point in May they led the American League East by four full games over a Red Sox team that would eventually reach the World Series. After starting 19-12 the Brewers went 49-82 the rest of the way, driven at least in part by an impossibly difficult stretch in the middle of the season.
The Brewers played 32 games in 30 days that June, then followed it with 31 in as many days in July despite working around the MLB All Star break. The stretch featured nine doubleheaders and two separate occasions where the team played five games spread across two cities in three calendar days.
Surprisingly, the Brewers held their own through much of this grueling campaign before things started to come apart in mid-July: They were 46-42 at the All Star break but went just 6-11 in July after resuming play, then 7-23 in August and 9-18 in September.
To read more Brewers On Deck Circle columns by Kyle Lobner, click here.
