2013 schedule released

There was some good news and bad news for the Wild Things when the Frontier League released its 2013 schedule Monday.

 

First, the good news. Washington will play more than half of its 96-game schedule at home, thanks to the league fielding a travel team. The Wild Things will play 54 home games and only 42 away from Consol Energy Park.

The bad news? More than a quarter of those road games will come in the season’s first three weeks.
Washington will play 12 of its first 15 games on the road, including the season opening series May 19-21 at Schaumburg. After a three-game series at Rockford, the Wild Things will play their home opener May 26 against the defending league champion Southern Illinois Miners.

The Wild Things will play only the Memorial Day weekend series at home before embarking on a six-game road trip to Joliet and Windy City.

If you think the Wild Things' early schedule is difficult, try Windy City's. The ThunderBolts open the season with 10 consecutive road games. Windy City does make that up in June when it has a 15-game homestand. That's right, 15 consecutive home games.

The league will again have 14 teams and keep the same alignment of two seven-team divisions. Lake Erie, Traverse City, Florence, Evansville, Southern Illinois and the travel team, which will be known as the Greys, will join Washington in the East Division. The Greys replace the Road Warriors. The new team will use the same logo as the Zanesville Greys, who were founding members of the Frontier League and its first champions.

One change for the 2013 season is start times for Sunday home games has tentatively been pushed up to 5:05 p.m. Home games on Monday through Saturday night will still have a 7:05 p.m. start.

 

The complete schedule:

 

http://washingtonwildthings.com.ismmedia.com/ISM3/std-content/repos/Top/News/2013%20Schedule-10.15.2012.pdf

Talkin' schedule, alignment

The Frontier League's 2012 is out, and it shows two news teams, two seven-team divisions, six teams switching divisions and some interesting road trips for the Wild Things.

The two new teams are Schaumburg (Ill.) and London (Ontario). Both ownership groups were approved in August, though London originally had plans to play in the Detroit area but was rebuffed by Clawson, Mich. Schaumburg will play in the West Division and London in the East.

Moving to the West Division will be Windy City, Rockford and defending league champion Joliet. Going from the West Division to the East will be Florence, Evansville and Southern Illinois. Florence and Evansville have previously been in the East. This will be the first time Southern Illinois won't be playing with the St. Louis-area teams.

The alignment is basically the Chicago and St. Louis teams in the West Division, and everybody else in the East.

The Wild Things open the season Friday, May 18 at Evansville. The home opener will be Tuesday, May 22 against Gateway.

Washington will play 42 games against teams from the West -- one home and one road series against each team. There will be an unbalanced schedule against East foes. The Wild Things will play four series each against Florence, Lake Erie and London. They will play only two series against Evansville, Southern Illinois and Traverse City.

One thing that has plagued the Wild Things during their current run of nonplayoff years is poor starts to the season. In 2012, the Wild Things will need to win a lot of games on the road to avoid another bad start. There is a stretch in June in which the Wild Things play nine consecutive road games, each against division opponents. Twelve of Washington's first 15 division games will be played away from Consol Energy Park.

The Wild Things also have a tough stretch that begins July 31 during which they make two trips to St. Louis. Each series in St. Louis is followed by a home game without a travel day in between.

Wild Things open 2011 season on road

The Frontier League will have one new team in 2011 while a travel-weary franchise takes a season off to (hopefully) have a home stadium built.

The FL announced Monday that its 19th season will begin Thursday, May 19 with two games in the Chicago suburbs, including one contest involving the Wild Things. Washington will open its season at Joliet (Ill). The yet-to-be-named team is the newest franchise in the Frontier League and will play at 6,5000-seat Silver Cross Field. Joliet had a franchise in the now-defunct Northern League and that team's asests were recently purchased by an ownership group that joined the Frontier League.

“Counting our playoff games, we set a record last season with over 1.52 million fans watching Frontier League baseball,” commissioner Bill Lee said. “With our adding a strong baseball market in Joliet, we are looking at another tremendous year.”

The other May 19 game is Lake Erie at Windy City. The other eight teams will play their season openers May 20.

The East Division will consist of Washington, Lake Erie, Windy City, Joliet, Traverse City and Kalamazoo. The West Division remains the same with defending league champion River City, Gateway, Evansville, Southern Illinois, Normal and Florence.

The Oakland County Cruisers – who with the exception of hosting a few games in Michigan the last two years have played as a travel team – will not field a squad in 2011. The league asked the Cruisers to sit out the season while finalizing construction on their new Diamond at the Summit ballpark in Waterford Township, Mich. The Cruisers will return to Frontier League play for the 2012 season.

According to the Cruisers' website, there will be a dispersal draft in which other Frontier League clubs will be able to select players from the Cruisers' roster. Oakland County will be able to retain league rights to 13 of its players for the 2012 season.

“Frontier League owners and the commissioner’s office have worked very closely with (Cruisers president) Rob Hilliard and executive vice president Tim Birtsas to bring about a solution that enables us to immediately add a great Chicago-area market like Joliet and to provide the best possible scenario for the Cruisers to break into the metro-Detroit region,” Lee said.

Added Hilliard: “While we were fully prepared to play the initial part of our 2011 season in an area college facility and the latter part of our schedule in a semi-completed stadium, the ideal situation is to unveil a brand new state-of-the-art venue with our organization being able to hire the right people and to give them a full season to properly market the Cruisers."

The Cruisers will begin the bid process in the coming weeks so that construction can begin as soon after the New Year as possible.

The league will not announce the complete schedule until Tuesday, so the date for the Wild Things' home opener is not known as of this writing.

Lake Erie will host the 2011 Frontier League All-Star Game on July 13, and the regular season concludes on Sunday, Sept. 4 with games in Gateway, Kalamazoo, Normal, Southern Illinois, Traverse City, and Windy City.

Schedule released?

At least two teams - Southern Illinois and Normal - have released their 2010 schedule and already I'm puzzled by the format. The first thing that comes to mind is "doesn't make sense."

The Frontier League will stick to its 96-game schedule and two-division format. You would think it would continue having teams play division opponents 12 times each and non-division foes six times each.

Uh, no.

Southern Illinois plays division rival Windy City only six times. It plays the other four teams in the West 12 times each. Instead of playing six more games against Windy City, Southern Illinois will play East Division foe Florence 12 times. Huh?

Checking the expansion Normal Cornbelters' schedule, they will play all West teams 12 times except Windy City, which they will play only six times. Normal will play - you guessed it - Florence 12 times.

Huh?

This makes no sense.

No other teams have released their 2010 schedule.

By the way: The Wild Things will not play Normal until a three-game series Aug. 13-15 at Consol Energy Park.

Same time next week

Washington pitcher Zach Groh touched on a subject Wednesday night that has puzzled me since the Wild Things joined the Frontier League back in 2002: the schedule. He said it was unfair to pitchers. I agree.

Groh was Washington's starting pitcher last night against Rockford. His most recent start also was against Rockford. It was the fifth time this season that Groh has faced the same opponent in consecutive starts. He also faced Traverse City three times in a four-start stretch. Jason Neitz has made consecutive starts against the same opponent four times.

This is a result of the Frontier League's scheduling method, which could use some improving. What I don't like about the schedule is each FL team will play two interdivision teams one week, then play the same teams the next week at the opposite site. This causes the same pitching matchups in consecutive weeks, which is good for the hitters and bad for pitchers (Groh's performance last night being an exception). To quote from the M*A*S*H* episode in which Hawkeye tries to make Radar a "Corporal-Captain" before entering the officer's club, "I don't like it. I don't like it at all."

The Frontier League does this because it makes scheduling easier. Simply copy and paste one week from the the master schedule and reverse the sites. It's scheduling made easy.

The FL isn't the only league that has done this. Major League Baseball did it for years. You might recall the Pirates making trips to the West Coast to play the Dodgers, Giants and Padres, then playing the same teams at home the next week. MLB started going away from this scheduling trend when they went to three divisions in each league.