Ninety-one games. So far.

That's the number of games that have been lopped off the schedule after MLB commissioner Rob Manfred's news conference last week. We can only hope that the number doesn't go up.

For now, if an agreement is reached post haste, the plan is for each team to pick up its regular-season schedule with the beginning of its third series. That might be the simplest way to go about it, but it's far from ideal. That's not just because it means less baseball, but because the cancellations will affect each team a little bit differently.

There are seven teams that, as of now, will lose seven games, but even within that group there are disparities. While the Dodgers, Marlins and Athletics will all lose seven home contests, the canceled games of the Tigers, Yankees and Giants were to all be played on the road. The Royals will lose four at home and three on the road.

That's not the only wonky thing about a schedule that is now both full of oddities but is also what we are now forced to hope for because it would mean that the lockout gets settled, and fast. Five teams are slated to lose five games and 18 will lose six, and the home-road splits among those groups varies from club to club.

How big of an effect might this have?

We'll get to that question, but in the end, teams will play between 155 and 157 games apiece. That might not seem like a huge deal, yet if you lose a division race or miss out on a wild-card spot by a half-game, well, call up your favorite member of the 1972 Red Sox to commiserate.

Because this has happened before.

The precedent

In 1972, a players' strike over a pension dispute resulted in 13 days of lost games, totaling 86 contests in all. There have been other seasons with lost games — 1981, 1985, 1994, 1995 — but the most analogous to the current lockout is 1972 because of the timing on the baseball calendar and, so far, the similarity in the totals of lost games.

As is the plan for 2022, when play began in the 1972 season, teams just picked up the schedule as it was originally laid out, beginning with the day they were ready to go. The 86 lost games were simply just gone, lost to history. As will be the case in 2022, the resulting schedule was inequitable. Teams played between 153 and 156 games in 1972, but that was only part of the problem. For example, the Twins lost seven home games, while the Angels and Padres both lost only one home gate. Weird stuff.