I’ve pretty much given up trying to figure out why MLB schedules games as it does, especially with the extremely unbalanced schedules now prevalent, but this one mystifies me: Why did most teams play on opening day, the 1st… and then a large number sit out the next day, the 2nd, even though they were playing another game against the same team on the 3rd? Especially given that series are so rarely interrupted by rest days, this makes no sense at all…
In case of bad weather or rain. If it’s too cold or wet, you can postpone the opener a day without messing with the schedule. The cold especially isn’t a problem later on in the season.
I guess that almost makes sense. Thanks.
A few years back, the Indians’ home opener was snowed out, so I can see why they’d want to do this.
You’ll note that teams with domes like the Brewers or teams in mild climates like the Dodgers don’t schedule the next day rain/snow delay off day.
Moved from General Questions to the Game Room.
samclem, moderator
So the Yankees have a night game this evening in the Bronx, followed by a 1 PM day game tomorrow in Detroit. Brilliant.
It also goes to make Opening Day a week long event. You get most of the marquis games scheduled for the first day and some of the crappy match-ups scheduled for the 4pm starts. Then you can have the good teams who don’t have great starting series begin their season on day two. This guarantees TV coverage for almost every team in the league.
SFC Schwartz
Stop trying to make me feel sorry for the Yankees 
MLB teams want Opening Day (capitalized) to feel special. They always sell a lot more tickets for Opening Day, and they’ll decorate the park and schedule celebrity appearances, award ceremonies, military fly-overs, and so forth.
In the event of rain, they’d rather just move everything back by a day and honor the Opening Day tickets the next day. If you already have a game scheduled the next day, then what was going to be your second game becomes Opening Day. You can’t just honor the Opening Day tickets, because you’ve already sold tickets for the second game.
So if you go ahead with your ceremonies and fly-overs, you’re doing it in front of a tiny crowd (the second game is usually one of the smallest crowds of the year) and it feels lame. Or if you cancel the add-ons then you’ve effectively lost Opening Day.
So you leave a buffer day in case of rain or snow.
I always feel sorry for the Yankees. For one thing, the testimony of many ex-Yanks is that the team positively sucks to play for if you’re not one of the 10 headliners. Just wearing pinstripes on the bench is supposed to make feel speshul.
On top of the ‘springtime it rains’ reason, this year opening day (for most teams) was on Sunday - Monday’s usually a lighter schedule anyway, the whole season through.
But it’s usually because one series ends on a Sunday, and teams travel on Monday.
So never mind.