Hey MLB–Fix the Schedule!

The weather for tomorrow's Phillies Home Opener is going to be less than ideal for baseball. AccuWeather is calling for considerable cloudiness with a high of 49. But it'll feel much colder, with winds of up to 30 mph making it feel like 37 degrees in the shade.

I go on this rant every season. Let the teams in the Northeast and Midwest start the season on the road for the first 10 days or so. The Phillies have an 11-day road trip and two 10-game trips this season. Why not have one of those to start the season and play in domes and warm weather cities?

Ten days can make a huge difference when it comes to weather in April. It makes no sense for MLB to schedule games in Philadelphia, New York (48, winsy), Boston (48, windy) , Detroit (33, cloudy) , Chicago (37, partly cloudy), Denver, Cincinnati (39, partly cloudy), and Washington (48, windy) when history shows how lousy the weather can be.

And it makes even less sense to have warm-weather and dome teams playing each other while players and fans are freezing their asses off in the rest of the country. Arizona is playing the Padres in San Diego. Miami and Tampa (both dome teams) are playing each other. Houston is playing at Oakland.  

Here are the warm weather and dome cities: Atlanta, Miami, Tampa, Toronto, Milwaukee, Houston, Arlington, TX, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Anaheim, San Diego, Oakland, San Francisco, and Seattle. Those 14 teams should be playing at home for the first 10 days of the season and hosting cold-weather teams. But what about the other two cold weather teams?

Here's the solution–schedule three three-game series in San Juan to start the season. Have a pair of cold weather teams play each other in Puerto Rico and showcase MLB on an island that has produced scores of MLB stars. Everybody wins. And nobody freezes their butt off.