Philadelphia Phillies: Dumb features of the 2020 schedule

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(Photo by David Maxwell/Getty Images) /

In charting the 162-game odyssey of the 2020 Philadelphia Phillies season, several odd or downright dumb schedule quirks stand out.

Making a six-plus month schedule for 30 MLB teams is no easy task. You couldn’t pay me enough to do it. Ok, maybe you could. From park considerations to mandated days off to planning for the inevitability of games postponed by rain (or snow, since the season starts ridiculously early this year), it’s a tall task for anyone.

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But, seriously, what is going on with some parts of the Philadelphia Phillies‘ schedule in 2020?

You know that there are bound to be some weird features and side trips that don’t make sense, but multiple things jump out to me about this schedule. And maybe the Phillies ultimately get off easy since some of their travel is so close (New York, Washington, etc.) as opposed to a team like the Colorado Rockies, who are over 600 miles away from the nearest team.

Baseball’s overall model still makes sense. They intentionally design the schedule into home stands and road trips, usually bunches of six or nine games at a time. As nice as it would be to stay home for a few weeks in a row, it would have to be offset by similarly long away stretches. But baseball is not about to make a team play, for instance, all 15 of its road games against the NL West in one fell swoop. It’s the right decision to break it up to some degree.

Still, some common sense should prevail, and it certainly does not across multiple swaths of the 2020 Phillies schedule. With that in mind, here is a rundown of some of the most egregious cases that will play out in the upcoming year for the Phils.

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