Who Moved My All-Star Break?

We’re in the last week prior to the 2013 All-Star Break, and with it will come the usual pronouncements of some player setting a record for most ____ by the Break. Now of course, the actual date of All-Star Break moves around quite a bit, but its generally the beginning of the second week of July. Here’s a breakdown of the actual dates of the All-Star Game, excluding 1981 (when it was held after the end of the strike) and the dates of the second of the two games played each year from 1959-1962:

Take that and add in that fact that the teams all play a different number of games prior to the break, and it renders “Most ____ by the Break” statements kind of weak (at least without many caveats). Here is the percentage of each season’s games actually played prior to the Break from 1933-2012, excluding strike years:

As you can see, prior to the 1950s, the Break generally occurred with less than 50% of the season completed. That dramatically changed during the last 60s and early 70s, before dropping back under 50% in the early 1980s. The percentage has been trending upward since then, with the last season that had a break before 50% of games played occurring in 1991. (This represents games actually played based on rainouts/postponements, rather than the original schedule, but the percentages based on the original schedule didn’t differ significantly.)

Here is the average number of games played per team prior to the break in each non-strike season since the advent of the 162-game schedule. You can clearly see that the “All-Star Break” is not synonymous with “Halfway Point” or “First Half”:

With that, take with a grain of salt these “All-Star Break” records from 1933 to 2012, with the total games played by the player and his team: