Did the Miners' get the Shaft with Re-alignment

[BoomerFan]

Recently I heard an interview with Miner’s manager Mike Pinto who mentioned the recent divisional re-alignment was not kind to his team. He might be right from a rivalry, timing and scheduling stand point, but in terms of raw bus miles, divisional alignment is not the culprit, it is simply geography.

Each FL team will play a home and road series against each club in the league. To fill out the schedule each club will also play an extra home and away series against three other FL clubs during the season.

So except for the travel a club picks up for these two extra away series, every team has to travel to the same places on the map once during the season.
If you look at the Miners’ schedule, their three extra away series include games against Gateway and Evansville, not long distances. So while the Miners will travel more miles during the season than say more centrally located Joliet, Windy City and Schaumburg, it is because of geography not divisional alignment.
So re-alignment may not have given the Miners the shaft, it is simply where the mine or home ball park is located.

In fact, having 6 extra game against both Joliet and Windy City( like the Boomers have this year), might be a bigger problem to making the play-offs, than having long bus rides a club would have to take no matter what divisional line-up existed.

[BoomerFan]

Chris from “Wild about Things” posted a great article about how many miles each Club will have to travel under the FL 2012 schedule at http://wildthingsblog.blogspot.com/

Here are the miles each team will travel:
11,345 – Washington
10,729 - Traverse City
10,599 - London
9,273 - Southern Illinois
8,716 - Lake Erie
8,241 - River City
8,148 - Florence
7,773 - Gateway
7,587 - Rockford
7,517 - Evansville
7,231 - Joliet
6,745 - Schaumburg
6,357 - Windy City
6,255 – Normal

Looking at a map, the ranking for the top three travel clubs is not a surprise.

The 1500 mile difference between Southern Ill. and Gateway however, does suggest the Miners have one of the least efficient travel itineraries.

The Chicago-land clubs have more compressed totals as you would expect.

And it is “official”, Normal currently represents the most centrally located team in the league.