How Many Regular Season Baseball Games Are There?

The regular season for Major League Baseball is 162 games. Learn more about the regular season schedule, including how many games are played each day and which teams play each other.

Introduction

The regular season in Major League Baseball (MLB) consists of each team playing 162 games. These games are played over a six-month period from April to September. The 162-game schedule is divided equally between home games and away games, with 81 games at each team’s home ballpark.

The regular season schedule

The regular season schedule is complicated. For one thing, teams play more games against their division rivals than any other teams in their league. That’s because Major League Baseball is divided into two leagues, the National League and the American League. Each league is then further broken down into three divisions: the East, the Central, and the West. So, for example, the Chicago Cubs play most of their games against teams in their own division, the National League Central.

That’s why there are 162 games in a baseball season: to accommodate all those divisional rivalries. But it’s not that simple. The regular season also has to allow for interleague play. That’s when teams from one league play against teams from the other league for a handful of games. That usually happens during special “interleague” weeks in June, July, and August.

All told, each team plays 162 regular season games over a 186-day period that starts on or around April 1st and ends on or around October 31st. That may sound like a lot of baseball, but it’s still less than half as many games as they used to play back in the 1800s!

The length of the regular season

The regular season in Major League Baseball (MLB) is typically innings long, with each team playing 162 games. However, there have been instances where the season has been shortened due to weather or other factors.

In 2014, for example, a number of games were postponed due to inclement weather, and as a result, the regular season was extended by one day. In 2008, the regular season was also extended by one day due to atiebreaker game that was necessary to determine which teams would make the playoffs.

The length of the regular season has also been shortened on occasion due to labor disputes. In 1994, for instance, the MLB players went on strike and as a result, the season was only games long.

In any given year, then, the exact number of regular season baseball games will vary depending on factors like weather and labor disputes. However, it is typically around 162 games per team.

How the regular season is structured

The regular season is divided into two halves. The first half of the season, which begins in late March or early April, is known as the “first half”. The second half of the season begins at the All-Star break in mid-July and ends in early October. Each team plays 19 games against each of its four divisional opponents during the first half of the season, and six games against each of ten interleague opponents and all four teams from the other division in their own league during the second half.

Why the regular season is important

In baseball, the regular season is the period of the year when games are played in order to determine which teams will advance to the post-season. The post-season (sometimes called the playoffs) is when the best teams from each league play each other in a tournament to determine who is the best team in baseball.

The regular season is important because it gives teams a chance to prove how good they are. If a team does well during the regular season, they will likely make it to the post-season. If a team does not do well during the regular season, they likely will not make it to the post-season.

During the regular season, each team plays 162 games. These games are spread out over six months, from April to September.

Conclusion

As we can see from the data, there is a lot of variation in the number of regular season baseball games played across different years. In general, there are between 155 and 162 games played in a season, with an average of 158 games. However, there are a few outliers, with seasons as short as 140 games and as long as 170 games.