Oakland and Seattle perpetually get the short end of the stick when it comes to travel, covering the most miles in the majors year after year.

Even by the A’s standards, though, next season’s schedule is brutal. And the team was so upset with some of the challenges that A’s President Mike Crowley tried to get some relief during recent owners meetings in Chicago — to no avail.

“We continue to be concerned about the competitive imbalance this schedule presents,” Crowley said this week without addressing the specifics because the dates will not be announced until Sept. 8.

Like other A’s and Mariners officials, Mickey Morabito, the A’s director of team travel, has been waging this fight for years and he has no hesitation about pointing out flaws in the 2016 schedule.

Among the biggest issues: for the second year in a row, the A’s do not play back-to-back series at Houston and Texas, meaning Oakland will make 12 trips to that state in 2015 and 2016. When the Astros joined the AL West in 2013, one of the suggested “benefits” was that teams would travel to play both in succession.

Next month, the A’s do play Texas and Houston on the same trip — but not back-to-back. In a puzzling bit of planning, they go from Dallas to Chicago and then to Houston.

More galling are two particular stretches next year. From April 18 to May 15, the A’s will be on the road for 22 of 28 days — and they’ll spend off days at Milwaukee and at Cincinnati on the same trip, lengthening their time away.

In fact, the club will wind up with three days off in an eight-day span, which barely skirts the collective bargaining agreement that limits days off to two in a seven-day span. That’s terrible from a competitive standpoint because it will disrupt the pitching schedule.

In mid-to-late August, the A’s will be on the road 14 of 17 days, with one trip home for a three-game series in the middle — Texas to Chicago, back to Oakland, and then back on the road to St. Louis and Houston.

And there are some oddities that seem strange from a balanced-schedule perspective: They don’t play at Texas, an AL West foe, until July, then they’re in Arlington in August and September, too.

Note, too, that the idea behind interleague play was to get every team to every city every six years. Not the A’s — they’ll repeat 2013’s excursions to Cincy and Milwaukee.

“Look at the past history,” Morabito said. “Their brilliant computer couldn’t figure that out.”

Katy Feeney, MLB’s senior vice president of scheduling, said reversing the A’s interleague next season would have been ideal, “but we didn’t want to screw up their schedule even more.”

The A’s also are a little miffed because they believe their needs are seldom considered, but when the Giants complained that they had to travel back from the East Coast after a night game and play the next day, the Players Association immediately responded that the issue should be addressed in the next CBA.

MLBPA head Tony Clark said by e-mail Thursday that the union is aware of the problems.

“Every year there are challenges with the schedule, and, unfortunately, a number of teams either have or will find themselves with similar scheduling/travel challenges,” he wrote. “I say that with a complete understanding as to just how challenging it is to put the schedule together. As always, we look forward to discussing and addressing as many of these scheduling challenges and issues as possible, which will invariably be beneficial to everyone involved.”

The AL’s West Coast teams believe that, as the teams with the most miles traveled, based on sheer geography, they should get some extra finessing, and they’re aggravated when they see East Division teams regularly visiting Seattle, Oakland and Anaheim back-to-back-to-back. The A’s, Mariners and Angels routinely make four or five trips to the Eastern time zone and have two division rivals in the Central time zone.

“Especially for West Coast teams, which have to use their off days to travel, this schedule is unforgiving,” Morabito said. “I try to be kind, but at this point, it’s ridiculous.”

There are plenty of complicating factors, however. Feeney said numerous conflicts make perfect schedules impossible, including the switch to two 15-team leagues, which requires season-round interleague games; specific dates on which many multi-use facilities aren’t available; and the demands of the national TV contract.

The A’s have two considerations most clubs do not: They play in a two-team market, so MLB tries to minimize the number of overlapping home dates with the Giants. In addition, the A’s share their stadium, which creates schedule headaches when the NFL season begins.

“The assumption is that we don’t care about minimizing travel, but I can assure you no team is ignored,” Feeney said. “Nothing is a one-team issue; there are 27 other teams besides the three AL West Coast teams. And no one is ever happy.”