The game between the Detroit Tigers and Kansas City Royals in Detroit was postponed Wednesday morning due to chilly winds. This makes the eighth postponed game in the MLB and we are not even a full week into the season. Several home openers including the Tigers, Reds, and Yankees had to be postponed to start with. No doubt there will be other games postponed within the next week or so.

Unfortunately, this is not surprising at all. The season started in late-March which still sees snow, freezing rain, frigid wind or even ice. Also, to nobody's surprise, these postponements are happening in stadiums in the upper mid-west and east coast.

Teams that play in the south or domed stadiums are fine, but places like Comerica Park, Wrigley Field, Great American Ballpark, Yankee Stadium or Fenway Park are in the northern parts of the country and exposed to the elements.

Why start so early?

There have been years when the MLB season started around the end of the first week of April, this year seemed way too early starting in late March. While early April obviously is bringing in bad weather, March 29 was unusual because for the first time ever all teams were scheduled to open that day. It would seem logical to start the season a few weeks later when the weather is a bit warmer, but there is still an issue.

The MLB does not want the World Series going well into November because the weather gets cold and bad again.

The 2016 World Series ended on November 3 (technically because game seven ended after midnight local time) and it is hard to imagine them wanting to go any further. If they started in mid-April, then the division series probably would not start until mid-October. That would mean the rest of the playoffs going well into November.

So what can be done?

This is not easy, but at the same time, it feels silly to schedule baseball games when the temperature is in the 40s or below with snow or freezing rain. If they wanted to start the season later and not end in mid-November, it would seem like one of the few options would be to simply shorten the season. Instead of 162, play 150.

It is an incredibly long season as it is. Yet there are still problems with that, it is hard to just shorten a season that has been 162 games long for decades. Unless maybe they played more scheduled doubleheaders because they cannot reduce the number of scheduled off days.

The last possible idea is to schedule as many games in climate controlled and/or southern ballparks as possible. Have games in Florida, California, Atlanta, Arizona or Texas to have less chance of bad weather. Milwaukee, Toronto, Seattle are north but have roofs. Is it possible to cover every single game? No, but it would reduce the number of postponed games if they did this as much as they could.

They kind of already did it this year, so it may have to be a balance between starting in suitable environments and starting the season after the first week of April. It would be ideal to avoid regular season baseball in March altogether. Postponed games will never go away, but seeing eight after not even a week is way too much.
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