Doubleheader Question

[Klew1986]

I had a game get rained out in April and rescheduled for July. I am now in July and noticed the doubleheader is set so one game is away and the second game is a home game. Shouldn't they both be either away or home and not split?

[r0nster]

my first thought is there is no more away or home games left against that team so it did a split

[cheo25]

It's attempting to simulate that the game is being made up during the teams' next series against each other. The thought is that the road team in the next series is the home team for the make-up game.

This has been done occasionally over the years, though I'm not sure the road team actually got to be the home team. For example, the Braves and Astros made up a 1983 game in September that was rained out on the Astros' last trip to Atlanta. The Astros got credit for the extra home game because the makeup was played in the Astrodome three weeks later. (Sadly, this was stuck in my head and I was able to verify through Baseball Reference: 1983 Houston Astros Schedule and Results | Baseball-Reference.com)

However in OOTP 16, the game also treats it as if the game is actually being played at the stadium where the game was rained out. So just use your imagination and suspend reality and pretend the two teams played the make-up at 1 p.m., then hopped flights and somehow made it to the next city for the 7 p.m. regularly scheduled game.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Klew1986

I had a game get rained out in April and rescheduled for July. I am now in July and noticed the doubleheader is set so one game is away and the second game is a home game. Shouldn't they both be either away or home and not split?

This is a limitation within OOTP. Apparently, all clubs must have their full number of home games for the season or else the financial engine starts having trouble. (I have no idea why that would be, it's only a difference of a few games at most, but that's what I was told.) So OOTP is listing it as a game in each club's park.

What would happen in real life is that if the game is being made up in the other club's park, the club that is hosting the game acts as if it is the away team in the makeup game—it wears its road uniforms and bats first. The visiting club is treated as if it is the home team—it wears its home uniforms and bats second. Statistically, however, the game is counted as a home game for the hosting club and an away game for the visiting club.


A Brief History of MLB Postponement and Rescheduling Rules

The real-life major league rules have on rescheduling postponed games has evolved over the years.

Originally, if a game was postponed in a club's park it was to be made up in that club's park. As this often wasn't possible, clubs sometimes lost a number of playing dates from their schedules. Later (in the 1910s if I recall correctly) the rule was changed to allow a postponed game to be made up in the other club's park if it could not be made up in the original park. So, for example, if a Cleveland at Detroit game was postponed, and no more dates in Detroit remained, the game would then be made up in Cleveland, with Detroit batting first as the road team and the game counted as an away game for Detroit and a home game for Cleveland.

This was the situation for many years until 2007. The rule was changed so that when a game was being made up in the other club's park, the other club was treated as if it was the visiting team even though the game was played in its park. So, for example, Boston at Seattle is postponed. There are no further dates in Seattle, so the game is made up as Seattle at Boston. However, for the purposes of the game, Boston is treated as the away team: it wears its road uniforms and bats first, even though the game is being played in its own park. Statistically, however, the game is counted as a Seattle away game and a Boston home game. What this means in practice is that the game is a case of the home team batting first.

In terms of when postponed games could be made up, until the early 1950s all postponed games had be made up by the scheduled end of the regular season. What that meant in practice is that a club could theoretically win or lose the pennant due to a postponement. If, for example, two clubs were tied on the final day of the regular season and one club played and lost while the other had its game rained out, the club that played and lost would finish a half-game behind the club that hadn't played and thus lose the pennant.

The rule was changed so that postponed games having a bearing on the pennant race could be made up even after the scheduled end of the regular season. So now, continuing with the previous example, the club that had been postponed on the final day of the season would make up its game the next day, either winning its game and taking the pennant, or losing and dropping into a tie (thus forcing a tie-breaking playoff game).