It won’t be too long — perhaps another week or two — before Major League Baseball will release the 2013 schedule. This is the most-anticipated schedule in recent years, due to the move of the Astros to the American League, realignment, and year-round interleague play.
After two years of having midweek starts and finishes to the season, MLB is returning to ending on a Sunday. Bill Shaikin:
After a 2009 postseason in which the Angels played nine games in 21 days and the Philadelphia Phillies played nine games in 23 days, MLB condensed the playoff schedule by moving the start and finish of the regular season to midweek. That change, introduced last year and in effect this year, essentially cut three days from the end of the season to the start of the World Series.
The restoration of those days comfortably allows for tiebreakers, the new wild-card playoff game and an extra day in the division series.
They could probably use those extra days for tiebreakers this year, due to the tight wild-card races. That could get real interesting down the stretch in 2012.