Starting in 2023, the Giants will no longer play the Padres 700 times per season
You don't want to play the Padres that much. You just don't.
Major League Baseball released its 2023 schedule yesterday, and, as had already been leaked, it signified the end of the unbalanced schedule. Since the beginning of this century, which was disturbingly long ago considering how recent it feels to me, every MLB team has played its division foes 19 times per season, compared to 6-7 for every other team in its league, and generally 4 per team in interleague play (though they currently don’t play every team in interleague).
Starting next year, that changes. Now each team will play 12 games against each team in its division. They’ll use those extra games to play every team in the other league, most of them three times, though the Giants will keep their home-and-home series with the A’s, which is important, because baseball cannot survive without crowning an annual Bridge Trophy champion.
Most importantly, though, this means we will get far less sick of division foes. This will eliminate a trip to Coors every year (yay!). This will eliminate a trip to Arizona (meh). This will eliminate a trip to Dodger Stadium (in most years, boo, though they could use one less trip there this year, IF YOU CATCH MY DRIFT). This will also eliminate a home series against each of those teams.
Most importantly, though, it will eliminate two series with the Padres.
In the year 2000, the Giants played the Padres 12 times. They had 5 games in July, and 7 in September. That was it. A nice, normal number of games against the Padres. In 2001, though, with the league adopting its new schedule, the Giants suddenly played the Padres 19 times. They opened the season against them in San Francisco for three, then after a series with the Dodgers played another three in San Diego. Then they faced each other seven times in June, and then another six times in September.
It went on like this for two decades. 19 games a year against the San Diego Padres. 19! As every Giants fan eventually came to realize, that’s far too many games against any one opponent, much less one as perpetually annoying as the Padres.
The Giants also played the Diamondbacks, Dodgers, and Rockies 19 times per year, and they too were often annoying — and this year every Dodgers game is a miserable reminder that they’re the most dominant team in the league and the Giants are thoroughly outclassed — but we’re focused on the important issues here.
Starting next year, though, all that is over.
In 2023, the Giants play the Padres just 12 times again. They’ll have a two-game series in April, a four-gamer in June, another four-gamer that starts on the last day of August, and then a three-game series to begin the last week of the regular season.
That is an entirely reasonable number of games to play against the Padres. Sure, we’ll be a little sick of them by the time that last series rolls around, but a good portion of that will be residual sickofthepadresalgia that’s been building up over a good 20 years or so.
I mean, do you realize that in 2020, the Giants and Padres played 10 times? 10 times in 60 games. That is disgusting. What kind of sick, twisted God would allow such injustice? Sure, the Giants also played the other NL West teams the same number of times, but it’s different with the Padres because every Padres game feels like 20 games.
By comparison, every Diamondbacks game feels like half a game, Rockies games depend on the stadium in which they’re played (.3 games at Oracle Park, 3.8 games at Coors), and every Dodgers game feels hopeless before it even starts, so what’s it matter anyway?
When the Dodgers aren’t badly outclassing the Giants, each Dodgers-Giants game feels like 2 games, but generally in a good way.
No, it is the Padres and Padres alone whose games feel like a perpetual slog, year-in, year-out. It is the Padres who elicit a “Ugggh” whenever they come up on the schedule, no matter their record or the Giants’ record, no matter the standings, no matter who’s on the Padres or who’s on the Giants. Their existence isn’t offensive, but it’s irritating, like the guy at work who keeps trying to talk to you about the Marvel TV shows, even though you’ve made it very clear that you haven’t ever watched a single one.
You never want to play the Padres. It’s not that they’re necessarily better, or favored to win over the Giants. It’s that they’re just the dang Padres, and who wants to deal with all of that? I sure don’t. My guess is that you sure don’t. And now, we’ll all get to not deal with them for another 7 games every year. There are bigger wins in the world, but I think we’ll all take this one.