Even though the 2025 World Series ended just a few weeks ago, I’m already looking ahead ot the 2026 season. I watch a lot of baseball. But I don’t have any particular team loyalty. So when I turn on mlb.tv, I often default to Big Inning (which is great), the Yankees (I interned with them for a season), the Dodgers (Shohei), or some random good pitching matchup. My mlb.tv wrapped covered every team.
For 2026 I thought I’d do something different. With 181 days of at least 4 games, I’m perfectly set up to spend 6 days at a time with each team. I can immerse myself in their home broadcasts and hopefully get to know their main characters a bit more.
To get my schedule I threw together a very loose optimizer in python. 6 days per team, a game every day, minimizae the standard deviation of the number of games for the “other” team. It’s pretty rough, but it got hte job done.
I get to watch the single Opening Night game (Yankees vs Giants), then a choice of 3 games on Monday 9/21 (or maybe a day off?), and complete freedom for Game 162 to close the regular season. Otherwise, my games are set.
The Schedule
I’ll watch the Pirates 12 times outside of their “feature” set, and the Marlins 11x. Probably not teams I would normally be tuning in for so that’s a plus.
I get 5 “repeat” matchups Nats-Pirates in April and July Jays-Red Sox in April and August Angels-A’s in June (with just a 5 day gap) Braves-Mets in July Mets-Marlins in August and September
Matchups that caught my eye:
- Dodgers-Giants is my first big rivalry series
- I follow the A’s across California, playing the Giants, Angels, and Dodgers.
- Pirates-Phillies all-PA matchup (rip POOP
- Yankees-Red Sox in August
- Finishing with the Marlins and White Sox in September will be interesting
- Padres-Dodgers in the 2nd to last series may have some big playoff consequences