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The Oakland Athletics will open next season at home on Monday, April 4 with a night game against the Chicago White Sox, according to the 2016 schedule released by Major League Baseball today. The final home game will be Sunday, September 25 against the Texas Rangers, and the last game of the season is Sunday, October 2 at the Seattle Mariners. The A's play their final 16 games against AL West opponents, and 22 of the final 26.
As reported earlier by the San Francisco Chronicle, the A's will make six separate trips to the state of Texas for their road games against the Houston Astros and Texas Rangers. The schedule pairs each visit to Texas with a trip to a Central Division opponent in either league.
For interleague play, Oakland will host the Milwaukee Brewers (two games), Chicago Cubs (three games), and Pittsburgh Pirates (three games). The A's visit the Brewers (two games), Cincinnati Reds (three games), and St. Louis Cardinals (three games). The A's play the Giants in a four-game home-and-home rivalry set the last week of June.
In an effort to consolidate Oakland's East Coast travel, the A's make two three-city trips to Eastern Time Zone opponents. The A's visit the Yankees, Blue Jays, and Detroit Tigers from April 19-28 and then the Orioles, Red Sox, and Tampa Bay Rays from May 6-15. This means the A's play 19 of 25 games on the road between April 19 and May 6. There is also a stretch of 12 of 15 road games in late August.
A little bit of travel hassle could have been saved had MLB scheduling successfully reversed their 2013 trips to Cincinnati and Milwaukee, eliminating an Eastern Time Zone team from the schedule. However, Katy Feeney, MLB's senior vice president of scheduling, told the San Francisco Chronicle, "We didn't want to screw up their schedule even more."
The All-Star Break is scheduled for July 11-14 after 88 games.
For the Raiders, it looks like the Oakland Coliseum is going to be available for preseason football use August 18-21, 25-29, and regular season use September 15-18 and September 29 to October 2.
#Athletics 2016 schedule: pic.twitter.com/WMcKU0GNj8
— Susan Slusser (@susanslusser) September 8, 2015
The complete schedule is also available at the Oakland A's website.
For spring training, Oakland's tentative 15-game HoHoKam Stadium schedule has also been released, with the A's opening against the Colorado Rockies on March 4 and wrapping up against the Arizona Diamondbacks on March 30. I expect the A's to renew their Bay Bridge exhibition series against the Giants between April 1-3.
