PCL's Unbalanced Schedule - Pacific Coast League - AAA Baseball On MLNSportsZone,com, A Minor League News Sports Magazine

Unbalanced Schedule
Travel concerns are forcing PCL teams to play more games within their own conference; fans pay the price as not every team visits each city.

By Will Kimmey
MinorLeagueNews.com

03.15.04 -- Craig Kuzmic spent the entire 2003 season in the Triple-A Pacific Coast League, splitting the campaign between Tacoma and Fresno by virtue of a June 25 trade from the Mariners organization to the Giants.

Yet, Kuzmic never played a single game against Albuquerque, Nashville or Omaha despite playing in 101 games, or 70 percent of the dates on any PCL team's 144-game giveaway pocket schedule.

His teams did, however, face Las Vegas 32 times and Tucson 28 times, accounting for more than 40 percent of the games Kuzmic's clubs faced.

If you’re looking for an explanation behind these lopsided numbers, examine the PCL's unbalanced schedule.

The league's 16 teams are set up in two eight-team conferences with four divisions of four-teams.

Clubs play each team within their conference 16 times (eight at home and eight away) for a total of 112 games.

The remaining 32 games on the schedule are split between teams in the opposing conference.

Four home games are played against each of the teams in one division, with road games versus the teams in the other division.

It results in each club playing 11 different teams at home and 11 different teams on the road, but not every team visits every city each year.

The PCL switched to this schedule before the 2003 season, and plans to adhere to it again in 2004 (with the inter-conference home and road sites flip-flopping).

This format will likely carry into the near future based on maintaining reasonable travel times, distances and costs.

Although PCL president Branch Rickey points out that cost wasn't an overriding factor in the decision, " a reality is the cost," he admitted to MLN.

The individual clubs, which foot the bill for all travel and accommodations on the road per the player-development contracts with their major-league affiliates, certainly don't mind saving in that department.

The bottom line though, is to make the travel easier on the players, and to make sure the teams get to their destinations on time for their next game.

"There's a sense we are minimizing some of the longer travel," Rickey said. "You travel across three time zones, and while it may not always disrupt the travel (itself), it disrupts the players, particularly coming back the other way and losing time."

Leagues below the Triple-A classification all travel by bus, while Triple-A clubs use commercial airlines.

While the 14-team International League finds itself in similar circumstances as the PCL, it only spans two time zones in the Eastern third of the country.

The PCL stretches three time zones across nearly two-thirds of the country from the Mississippi River t to the Pacific Ocean, in cities like Tacoma, Wash.; Edmonton, Alberta; Albuquerque, N.M., and New Orleans.

Such vast outposts necessitate air travel as three of the league's four divisions couldn't even play if bus trips were the only option.

"The Pacific Coast League is inextricably linked to commercial air travel," Rickey said. "We don't have the luxury of charter solutions."

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