The slimmer 10-team American Association unveiled it’s first significant plans for the 2027 season: releasing the schedule for next season. Not surprisingly, there are quite a few changes, some expected, some a little surprising.

The season will begin on May 7 and conclude September 5, with playoffs to begin on September 7. All-Star Game festivities will be help on July 13-14.

Here is the PDF of the full schedule

A breakdown of the notable takeaways:

Move to 102 Games

The American Association has played 100 games since the 2011 season, but next year they will tack on two more games to the season. With the loss of two teams, making the schedule fit together with 10 teams is a little trickier than 12 teams with the 100-game parameter, due to the need to keep games in 3 or 6-game increments.

Next year will be the longest season in American Association history.

Season Expands; Opening Day Moves Up

Next season, the American Association opens on Friday, May 7, the earliest Opening Day in the league’s history. On the flip side, the league expanded the schedule to fill an additional week on the calendar. That week is filled by two more games, plus four additional off days compared to the previous schedule.

To compare: in 2019, the entire 100-game slate, plus an All-Star Game was completed in just 110 days (and 109 days for four teams). In 2027, the 102-game slate will cover 122 games.

Consequently, the dreaded Monday night game is all but dead now. Only one Monday game will be played: a May 17 tilt between Fargo-Moorhead and Lincoln.

Kansas City Moves East

The East Division just got a lot tougher as the defending champion Kansas City Monarchs will slide over to the East Division. It’s definitely a bummer for the Monarchs in that all of their divisional trips are 8-10 hours, with less quick-hitters to Lincoln and Sioux City.

There was really no great way to go about it, as the I-29 corridor has six teams the Chicago and Milwaukee area has four teams. Someone had to go over and Kansas City made the most sense.

More Divisional Play

Speaking of divisions, all teams will get much more familiar with their four division rivals, with the number of divisional matchups rising from 12-15 to 18 for all squads.

After some trips were skipped last year, the schedule appears to be fully balanced: all 10 teams will play 18 games against each division rival (9 home, 9 away) and 6 with each out-of-division foe (3 home, 3 away).

All-Star Game stays aligned with MLB

Once more, the All-Star Game (location not announced yet) is schedule for the day after MLB’s is slated, in this case, Wednesday, July 14. Last season, the timing allowed the American Association to air the contest on MLB Network, the first nationally-televised contest in league history.

Postseason Format Not Explicitly Mentioned

The league announced that the postseason will begin Tuesday, September 7, but they did not indicate if the format will change. It was already a little clunky with 8 of 12 teams making the playoffs, which makes it unreasonable (and frankly, unwise) to keep 8 playoff teams for next year.

Now, Fargo-Moorhead’s schedule did have September 7-25 shaded for the postseason, which would seem to give a clue that three rounds of playoffs will still be played. Let’s see if that remains in the case.

In the mean time, 212 days till Opening Day!

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