I love football in the snow. Always have. Watching two teams grind it out on a frozen field in January while guys can barely feel their hands is some of the best sports television you can find. The elements don’t ruin football. They make it. Cold weather baseball in April works the same way. You are playing outside. Sometimes it is cold. That is part of the deal and the teams that figure it out early are the ones sitting on wins when everyone else starts complaining the weather finally got nice.
Cold Weather Baseball Does Affect the Game. That Is Not the Argument
The numbers on this are real and I am not going to pretend they aren’t. A study covering over 22,000 MLB games found that runs scored, batting average, slugging percentage, and home runs all increase significantly in warm weather compared to cold. Fly balls in temperatures under 50 degrees travel about 16 feet less than in temperatures over 90. Teams average around 4.2 runs per game when it is below 60 degrees, and that number climbs past 4.7 once you get above 80. In truly extreme heat, hitters hit 63% more home runs than they do in cold conditions. The science is not complicated. Cold air is denser. The ball does not carry. Pitchers have grip issues. Hitters have stiff hands.
So yes, cold weather baseball changes the product on the field. The game you are watching in 40-degree Pittsburgh in early April is not the same game you are watching in July. Scoring is down. Power numbers are down. That is true.
It is also completely beside the point.
Cold Weather Baseball Wins Still Count in the Standings
Every team in a northern city deals with the same early April weather. The Cubs are not playing in the cold while the Cardinals are playing in a greenhouse. The Guardians are not at a disadvantage against the Tigers because Cleveland is cold and Detroit is warm. They are both cold. They both have to play through it.
And here is the thing nobody wants to say out loud: the teams that go out and take care of business in cold weather baseball games in April are building a lead. Those wins count exactly the same as a win in August when it is 85 degrees and the ball is flying. If your team goes 14-8 in April while grinding through 45-degree games at home, they are sitting two games up on the team that went 12-10 because their guys were mentally checked out waiting for the weather to get nice. Cold weather games are not meaningless warm-up rounds. They are games in the standings and the teams that treat them that way are the ones that show up in October.
If MLB Wants to Actually Fix Cold Weather Baseball in April, Here Is How
The real problem is not that cold weather baseball exists. The real problem is that MLB keeps scheduling northern teams at home in the first two weeks of April when everyone already knows what April looks like in Cleveland and Chicago and Pittsburgh. Roughly 50 to 100 games a year get postponed or shortened because of weather and the majority of them happen in April and May in northern cities. That is not bad luck. That is a scheduling choice.
The fix is straightforward: northern teams open on the road. Send Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Boston, and New York on extended road trips through the first two to three weeks of the season. Houston, Tampa, Miami, San Diego, Arizona. Play the games, they count the same, and when those northern teams get home in late April the weather is actually tolerable. Teams with domes or retractable roofs open at home. Toronto, Houston, Milwaukee, Texas. That part writes itself.
Will MLB shorten the season to make this easier? No. The league and the union both want all 162 games and that is not changing. So the schedule fix is the move. It is not radical. It is reading a weather map and making a decision before the first postponement of April forces you to stack a doubleheader into August when nobody wants it.
October Cold Weather Baseball Is Not Changing So Stop Asking
The playoffs are cold. They are going to stay cold. And the answer to that is you deal with it.
October in Pittsburgh or Cleveland or New York is going to be chilly. Some nights it is going to be flat-out cold. That is not a flaw in the system. That is what October is. The 2016 World Series ended in early November at Wrigley Field in Chicago and Game 7 went ten innings in the cold. Nobody walked away from that game saying the weather ruined it. They walked away saying it was one of the greatest baseball games ever played.
Cold weather baseball in the playoffs is supposed to feel like something. If you are sitting there complaining that your team has to play in October because it is too cold, what you are actually saying is you do not want your team in the playoffs. That is the only logical end of that argument. The whole point is to earn the right to play in October. Once you are there, the weather is the same for both teams. Tighten up and watch.
The scheduling fix helps April. October takes care of itself.
