Minor League baseball will be back in Tulsa this summer, and the Tulsa Drillers recently released their schedule for the upcoming season. The Drillers will play in the new Double-A Central League, and the season will begin a little later than usual.
It will be nice to see professional minor league baseball return to ONEOK Field this season. There wasn’t a minor league season last year due to the pandemic, and the Drillers instead, fielded a College Summer League team. It was the first time in 70 years that Tulsa did not have a professional baseball season.
In conjunction with Major League Baseball, the schedules for all 120 Professional Development League teams were announced last week. The Drillers, an affiliate of the World Champion Los Angeles Dodgers, will play a 120-game regular season that will begin about a month later than usual, May 4, and will run through Sept. 19.
The Double-A Central will play an unbalanced schedule, in an effort to minimize travel for the players, coaches and traveling parties. The schedule format will call for teams to play a six-game series each week with Mondays always an off day. There will be an even 60 home games and 60 road games.
The Drillers will play all four other teams in the North Division, both home and away, but will only play two teams from the South Division during the campaign. They will play home-and-away series with Amarillo and Midland, but they will not face Frisco, San Antonio or Corpus Christi at any point in the regular season.
This is disappointing because in the old Texas League, the Drillers played every team in the league at least once, even if it wasn’t both home and away. It’s also disappointing in that Tulsa fans won’t get to see Frisco, which is the Texas Rangers affiliate, and there are many Rangers fans in the area. Plus, San Antonio is making a return to the league after testing the Triple-A waters, and it will be disappointing not to see the Missions come to town this season.
The Drillers will open the season at home by hosting the Amarillo Sod Poodles at ONEOK Field, May 4 – 9. The last time the Drillers played a game, it was in Game 5 of the 2019 Texas League Championship Series when the Sod Poodles rallied late to keep Tulsa from winning consecutive league titles.
The Drillers will play at home on Independence Day (July 4) and will conclude the home schedule on Sunday, Sept. 5 (Labor Day weekend).
Unfortunately, however, the Drillers will have to play the last two weeks of the regular season on the road, at Amarillo and Midland.
The team Drillers fans will see the most is the Wichita Wind Surge, who will play 18 games in Tulsa.
A final decision regarding playoff scheduling and whether or not the league will use the traditional split-season format are still to be determined.
For ticket information, call the Drillers Ticket Office at (918) 744-5901.
MLB SPRING TRAINING
Pitchers and catchers reported to their respective Spring Training facilities last week, and the rest of the Major League Baseball squads began practices this past Monday. MLB recently announced a revised Spring Training schedule, taking into account the health and safety protocols it agreed to with the MLB Players Association in light of the ongoing pandemic. Cactus League teams in Arizona will play 28 games over 30 days, while Grapefruit League teams in Florida will play either 24 or 28 games in that same period. The games will begin on Feb. 28, when 28 of the 30 teams are slated to take the field. The other two teams, the Cubs and Mets, will play their first games a day later.
The MLB Spring Training games conclude on March 30, and the regular season will begin on April 1.