A short note before I get into the big news today: it’s late August, which means it’s time for MLB to release next year’s schedule. And so they did today. As usual, I’ll start compiling all of the home schedules to make my annual schedule matrix for 2019. There will be two different sorted lists, one by alphabetical order and another regional chart. There will also be a plain .CSV or Excel download for those who want to play with it on their own.
Obviously, the big news is that like 2008, the A’s will open the season in the Tokyo Dome. And like that opening series, the two-game set will be considered home games, meaning that there will be 79 scheduled home games at the Coliseum. The A’s will get a little extra revenue from moving the first two home games (March 20-21) to Tokyo. The price, besides the loss of two actual home games, will be a shortened Cactus League session. Though as most spring training followers are aware, roster spots and rotation should be determined by then.
It’ll take the rest of the week to put together the matrix, so keep an eye out for that here and on the Twitter feed.
newballpark.org 
That seems silly. Couldn’t they make the 2-game series home-and-home?
They offer these series as a carrot for low revenue teams like the A’s and Rays. Last time the A’s were playing the Red Sox. No chance in hell Boston was going to give up a game date at Fenway.