Mariners face baseball’s most grueling travel schedule
The Seattle Mariners biggest disadvantage won’t come on the field this season. As is frequently the case, it will come at about 35,000 feet in the air, as they are once again faced with baseball’s most grueling travel schedule.
According to Baseball Savant, the Mariners are currently scheduled to travel 43,281 miles during the 2015 regular season, which is 2,514 miles more than the next closest team, the Oakland A’s. Of course, those numbers are subject to change based on Mother Nature’s cooperation, but there’s no chance it’ll end up lower.
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As they say in real estate, it’s all about location, location, location. As the northwest most city in MLB, Seattle sits well out of the way, even in comparison to teams in the AL West. That makes for several longer than average trips just to play division games against the Los Angeles Angels, Texas Rangers and Houston Astros, in addition to those cross-country flights to New York, Boston and Tampa.
As a result, the Mariners are going to spend far more time on airplanes than everyone else, and in some cases will more than double the travel of other teams. Given the close proximity of all five teams in the NL Central, the Chicago Cubs, St. Louis Cardinals and Cincinnati Reds all come in at under 21,000 miles.
That’s a significant difference that no doubt impacts the standings to some degree. These guys are all human after all, and to face even the lightest of schedules, which comes in just under 3,500 miles a month, is physically and mentally taxing enough. Seattle’s monthly average tops 7,000 miles. Over the course of six months, the energy just isn’t going to be there every day. Even when they’re home for 7-10 days straight, the adrenaline will wear off and the fatigue will set in.
If there’s any solace, it’s that four of the top five most grueling schedules belong to the AL West team. The Houston Astros trail slightly in ninth place. But most of that is because they all have to travel to Seattle two or three times.
Unfortunately, there’s nothing MLB can do to make it better. All they can really do is keep the unbalanced schedule in place, ensuring it doesn’t get worse. Imagine two trips to Boston and Tampa every season at the expense of one to Oakland and Anaheim. We’ll need a lot more toes to figure that math, and the Mariners would need a lot more Starbucks coffee to survive.
Looking at it that way, 43,281 miles doesn’t seem nearly as bad. It’s more in the range of remarkably unpleasant rather than unbeatable test of the human spirit.
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Mark Townsend is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Townie813
