San Diego Padres 2020 schedule overview

The 2020 schedule for the San Diego Padres came out Monday afternoon for the shortened 60-game season.

Opening day for the Padres is at home on July 24 against the Arizona Diamondbacks, and the season closes in San Francisco on September 27.

The Padres are scheduled to open July 24 against the D-backs at Petco Park, 6:10 first pitch.

— AJ Cassavell (@AJCassavell) July 6, 2020

The Padres will face each team in the NL West ten times. However, the Padres do not play the same amount of home games against each team.

San Diego will travel to Colorado and Coors Field seven times, which doesn’t fare well for the pitchers. However, the Padres get seven home games against the Arizona Diamondbacks, which means fewer games in hitter-friendly Chase Field.

The Padres schedule against Dodgers and Giants is a little more reasonable. The Los Angeles Dodgers come to San Diego for two separate three-game series, which makes for a 6/4 home/road split. The San Francisco Giants will only play a single four-game series in San Diego, making a 4/6 home/road split.

For interleague play, the San Diego Padres will only play teams from the AL West. This division includes the Houston Astros, the Oakland Athletics, the Texas Rangers, the Los Angeles Angels, and the Seattle Mariners.

This is where each team’s schedules differentiate. Each team will play their interleague rival six times, three times on the road, and three times at home.

The San Diego Padres interleague rival is the Seattle Mariners, who finished in last place in 2019 and are projected to do so again in 2020. In essence, the Padres luck out with this, because the Arizona Diamondbacks will play the Houston Astros, the 2019 American League champions, six times. The Padres will need to take advantage of their extra games against the Mariners.

For the rest of interleague play, the 14 remaining games were randomly split between the four remaining AL West teams. The Padres will play two teams three times, and the other teams four times, twice on the road and twice at home.

The San Diego Padres are fortunate enough to get their three-game series against the two playoff teams in this division from last year: the Houston Astros and the Oakland Athletics. The Padres will get the Astros at home and travel to Oakland. This benefits the Padres because Oakland is significantly closer to San Diego than Houston.

The San Diego Padres will play the Los Angeles Angels and Texas Rangers four times. Reiterating the point from the previous paragraph, the Padres are lucky to play these teams four times, because they finished 3rd and 4th in the AL West last year. Both teams made good additions this offseason, so they will likely improve in 2020.

Scheduling wise, the San Diego Padres will be taxed early. Each team gets six off-days sprinkled amongst their 60 games. For the Padres, four of the six come in the final month of September. The dates for the off-days are August 6, August 24, September 1, September 17, September 21, and September 24. If the Padres get off to a hot start, this will help their playoff chances. If they start cold, it will hurt them.

The longest stretch of the season between days off is from August 7 to August 23. During this time, the San Diego Padres will play five (six if you count the back-to-back two-game series against the Texas Rangers) series. This stretch also includes nine straight road games, the longest road stretch of the season.

Twenty of the Padres' 30 scheduled home games this year have 6:10 p.m. start times.

— Dennis Lin (@dennistlin) July 6, 2020

The Padres will play ten straight home games from September 7 till September 16. All of those games will be against NL West teams.

Also, the Padres will play two exhibition games against the Los Angeles Angels before the season begins.

Team announces:#Padres will play two exhibition games against the #Angels on July 20 at Petco Park (6:10pm) and July 22 at Angel Stadium (6:40pm).

— Kevin Acee (@sdutKevinAcee) July 7, 2020

The San Diego Padres 2020 season will be exciting, and fans can now plan around the Padres schedule to watch the friars play meaningful games for the first time in ten months. It seems like the Padres have a reasonable schedule, but with a couple of teams who are tough to project on the schedule, nothing is sure. Padres baseball is almost back.

Dominic Stearn

Dominic is a graduate of Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, with a bachelor’s degree in Sports Journalism. He also  is the producer and co-host of the “Padres EVT Podcast.”