In OOTP schedule, how do numbers in file correspond to teams in league?

An Out of the Park (OOTP) Baseball schedule uses numbers (1 through however teams in the league).  If you want to get to specific matchups between teams, you need to know how those numbers match up with the teams in the league.

Rigging weekend home/away splits

I have come to make it a high priority to balance the number of home and away weekend series for all the teams.  There is an attendance boost in the game for weekend games, so it is not optimal to have some teams with several more home weekends than away and others with several more away than home.

5-team divisions, an easy scenario

Fairly recently there was a request involving an odd number of teams per division, which is a complicating factor, but the other parameters combined to make layout fairly easy. Granted, you may look at the full post length and wonder how it could be easy. But if you see past all the detail in the steps here, hopefully the key point is clear.

Circle Method - Part 8

For interdivision matchups with odd number of divisions each with same even number of teams

Consider a league (or subleague) setup of 18 teams in 3 divisions of 6 teams. For the 6-team divisions the circle method could be used to set up all the divisional matchups with all teams able to play divisional games at the same time. The next step would be to lay out the interdivision matchups. But an odd number of divisions means you could not have whole divisions matched up against each other - if every team in division 1 is playing against a division 2 opponent, those divisions are covered, but division 3 is left out.

A solution is to break up the divisions into pieces and do the initial layout steps on those pieces rather than either by whole division or by individual team.

Circle Method - Part 7

Alternative layout methods

For the last (at least for now) entry about the circle method, we abandon the circle method. Particularly for team counts that are power of 2 (like 8 and 16), there are more symmetric things that can be done.

Circle Method - Part 6

For interdivision and interleague matchups

So far we have been building only for a single division. But this matchup generating scheme can be used also to set up interdivision and interleague matchups where the opposing divisions/leagues have the same number of teams.

Circle Method - Part 5

Balancing home/away

So far there has been no consideration of the home/away nature of the matchups as the goal has been to simply get all the matchups defined. But you could consider each "A v B" as "A @ B", such that "A" is away and "B" is home. Where does that put us toward even home/away splits for teams?

Circle Method - Part 4

Odd number of teams

For an odd number of teams there are a couple possible approaches. One team must always be left out - perhaps it will be playing interdivision or interleague games when it is the one left out. Ignoring for now what we doing with that left-out team, we can build the matchups the same sort of way.

Circle Method - Part 3

Examples showing 8 teams and 10 teams

Not doing anything spectacular here, just using the circle method to make matchups for a couple more scenarios.

Circle Method - Part 2

Using the algorithm instead of the brain

The circle method is a systematic way to determine the matchups without having to think much. There are other things you can find online that can provide more info. The way I will show things is not the only way to employ the method. The goal is to find something that works and is easy for you.

Circle Method - Part 1

Building round robin matchups

For a balanced schedule you want to make sure every team plays every other team some number of times. For almost any schedule through there may be at least "local" balance - e.g., you may want a team to play all its divisional opponents an equal (or nearly so) number of times.

How do you determine the matchups? First, we will charge straight in without any real plan and see where that takes us as we try to build a round robin that gets every team playing every other team.

Series Layout - Some Basics

Okay, enough philosophical rambling (for now).  This is a peek at work that actually makes a schedule, or at least some of the first basic steps.