:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/photo_images/7993638/20120722_pjc_sv3_043.jpg)
While the 2012 season may be lost for the Red Sox, Major League Baseball announced the 2013 schedule on Wednesday and Boston fans can now start marking their calendars for next season. The Red Sox will open the year on April 1 against the Yankees, starting with a three-game set in the Bronx. They'll host the Orioles one week later for the homer opener at Fenway.
The Red Sox will take on the NL West in interleague, with games interspersed throughout the season in a departure from the traditional pre-All-Star Break slate. They'll face the Phillies, their traditional interleague foe, in back-to-back home-and-home series at the end of May. The Sox will also have a home-and-home series against the Rockies, playing at Fenway in June and traveling to Coors Field for the second-last series of the season in September.
An interleague highlight will be a road trip in August to face the Giants and Dodgers. There will certainly be plenty of storylines for the media when they face Los Angeles, with Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett, and possibly Carl Crawford in the other dugout. It's the first series at Chavez Ravine since 2002.
The Sox will also be home for holiday games on Memorial Day, July 4th, and Labor Day. The tough stretches of the schedule seem to be concentrated, as Ben Buchanan of Over the Monster writes, setting up an opportunity in the final month of the season:
So long as the Sox can keep it close in the first five months, they'll have their chance to win--or lose--the division in September as the year winds down to a crazy finish starting on September 5: four in New York, three in Tampa, three more against the Yankees, and then six against Baltimore and Toronto. Oddly enough, the year will end with a pair of two-game road series against Colorado (this is the first year of even leagues and year-long interleague play) and Baltimore.
For more on the Red Sox schedule, visit Over the Monster.