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.

What do you mean, "blogs aren't really a thing anymore"?

So I was gone for a while. A long while. I am back at it again, at least for now.

I am trying to pick up where I left off, which is pretty much the beginning of the road here. I am trying to make my tools better to get results I like better and more quickly.

I still have a tendency toward trying to make schedules that have characteristics like MLB. Recently MLB has lengthened the season to add a few more offdays across the season. That means now instead of 51 there are 52 halfweeks for the 162 games. With an additional halfweek for the All-Star break, the schedule generally spans from end of March or beginning of April to end of September to beginning of October. E.g., ignoring the overseas games Sea/Oak games earlier in March, 2019 spans from Mar28 through Sep29.

MLB schedules are great at limiting very short and very long homestands and roadtrips. At the top of my list in getting back into this is to try to find ways to minimize the single-series and 4-series homestands and roadtrips and maximize the 2- and 3-series homestands and roadtrips (i.e., usually 6-10 games). I do not expect to ever be getting great results in that regard like MLB since I want to churn out schedules quickly, but I want to find ways to get better.

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.

Series as Building Blocks - Part 2

When a schedule request specifies to some degree the number of games per opponent my first step is figuring out how to break them down into series, preferably mostly 3-game series and some 4-game.  If the games per opponent are not prescribed, I gravitate toward numbers that make for an easier series breakdown.

Series as Schedule Building Blocks - Part 1

Schedules are about teams playing games.  But typically for me individual games are not considering during much of the process.  For most of the way I only care about series rather than the individual games that compose series.

The fewer independent parts to have to manage and manipulate, the easier the process is.  That theme will be recurring.

The Modern MLB schedule

When I make a schedule I tend to gravitate in the absence of contrary specifications (and maybe sometimes in spite of them!) to a form very similar to that of modern Major League Baseball (MLB) schedules for parameters not specific to league structure.  What I mean by modern is basically the last several years when I have been making schedules, though not much has changed across the wild card/interleague era going back to the mid-1990s.  Maybe "current" is a better term, but I am using "modern".

This is probably the sort of schedule with which more people, at least in the US and Canada, are more familiar than any other.  I suspect that even if the specifics are not consciously known, many people have a good "feel" for many of the parameters.  Unless something is specified otherwise I will generally make the assumption that someone requesting a schedule is figuring on parameters similar to current MLB.  From that mindset initially when I first got into this some of my creation techniques became geared more toward making schedules with resemblance to modern MLB.  That in turn leaves me more inclined in that direction, which over time leads to a preferred style.

Now I will describe and discuss some of the parameters of the modern MLB schedule.  Feel free to comment on any you may like or not like.