Study Reveals Each MLB Team Plays Staggering 162 Games Per Season
Study Reveals Each MLB Team Plays Staggering 162 Games Per Season
Insanity?
By Dave Henry
A new report by ESPN Stats and More Stats has uncovered a staggering statistic — each Major League Baseball team plays an astounding 162 games, per season.
“I couldn’t believe it at first, I thought my math was off. But then I crunched the numbers again and again and lo and behold, they were indeed correct,” said Enzo Rodriguez, chief statistician at ESPN. “It’s truly mind-boggling and quite frankly insane.”
But it helped him to explain why baseball was declining in popularity.
“It’s just way too many [expletive] games," said Rodriguez. “Pardon my French, but there’s just too many games, that are too long, with too little action. And they thought shortening each game by a half hour would somehow help? No wonder the sport is dying. You can’t ask that much of your fans without giving them something in return.”
Rodriguez also shared that each MLB team plays almost every day, for six months straight, literally half the year, on top of Spring Training and potential playoffs - leading to a possible it’s 8 months straight “of boring ass baseball.”
“No one can possibly pay attention to, much less care about, a team that plays that often,” he added. “Can you remember the last time you cared about something 162 times? I don’t even love my kids that much.”
Rodriguez added that “times have changed” and it's time the game do the same.
“The sport was invented in the 1800s when there was literally nothing to do, I mean nothing. No TV, no internet, and few books,” the amateur baseball historian said. “People would literally sit around and stare at each other when they were done working backbreaking 14-hour days at factories. They were catatonic from working all day and just needed something to sit there and watch every day after work, no matter how boring, no matter how long. It got this country through two World Wars if you ask me.”
But today there are “endless” ways to while away the day’s empty hours -- from mindless doom scrolling to watching third-rate subpar shows on Netflix-- so there is no longer a need for that daily drumbeat of baseball games, Rodriguez said.
“Cut the schedule in half — 81 games. It works for hockey and basketball,” he said. "That’s the answer.”
When reached for comment about the study’s findings, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred was pessimistic about the idea of cutting the season in half.
“That’s quite possibly one of the most preposterous ideas I have ever heard,” said Manfred, while swimming in a sea of hundred-dollar bills and the bones of famished minor league players. “And quite frankly, a complete violation of the integrity of the game.”
End of the Bench will have more as this story develops.
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