Kill the 162-game season

It’s roughly around this time of year when I start to wonder if 162 games is a mistake.

My bias is pretty clearly in this regard. The approximate middle of the season has not been kind to recent iterations of the Guardians. The team is currently 34-38 at game 72; in 2022 they were 40-41 at game 81; in ‘21 they were 42-42 at game 84; in 2019 they fared better, but at game 71 were just 37-34 before turning on for the second half.

But it’s not just the Guardians! Over on the decaying husk of Twitter, I’ve seen a few posts wondering about the state of baseball, in particular the Central divisions, and how poor it seems at the moment. To me, discourse like this is a symptom of bored fans. And as…