So the first weekend of interleague play has just ended, and as ever, the baseball “purists” crawl out of the slime to decry the blight on our national pastime that is interleague play. While I understand some of the complaints, notably the unbalanced schedule issue, I am in favor of the games because I think they add excitement and give fans a chance to see different teams. What I can’t stand is the argument made by some, notably Brian Murphy on the ESPN.com site (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=murphy/050523&num=0), that the interleague games have to go because they are boring in that they don’t feature exciting matchups.
Murphy makes the following comment (which is actually really funny)
I get it Brian, Diamondbacks/Tigers is a boring match up to you, but it’s not unique to interleague play. It’s not like every game of the regular schedule is thrilling either. In addition to Arizona, the Tigers also play the Tampa Bay Devil Rays seven (7) times this year. Those are INTRAleague games, and what unforgettable memories does that conjure up? The time in 2001 when a few of the Tigers players got lit and drove to Tampa from their spring training site in Lakeland to do some laundry and check out the night life?
Interleague isn’t perfect, but don’t argue with the matchups. You take the good with the bad. In my opinion, Detroit/Arizona is worth it for the chance to see NY/NY, Tex/Hou, Chi/Chi, etc. Just as with Intraleague, the price you pay for watching NY/Bos 19 times in a season, is that you also have to see KC/Cle. 19 times in a season. It’s the nature of a schedule in a league without absolute parity, and ascribing guilt solely to interleague play is pointless.
Plus, don’t forget that last year, Arizona/Detroit would have given Detroit fans a chance to see Randy Johnson for the first itme since he left Seattle. I think that might have been worth a ticket if I were a Tigers fan (assuming he was still good and so on and so forth).
Agreed for the most part. Uninteresting interleague games are no more an issue than uninteresting intraleague games.
The main argument against Interleague play is and should be that teams with an above average natural interleague rival that they play each year (like, say… the Mets) that finish 1 game behind a team that has a patsy for an interleague rival (like, say… Florida) are at an unfair disadvantage.
And it’s not like the Mets need another externally generated disadvantage. They’re perfectly capable of blowing it on their own.
I wish people spent more time bitching about the unbalanced schedule. thats a bigger problem than interleague, IMHO. Hey, I love that there are so many Cubs/Cards games, but it might be nice to see Atlanta and Florida more than once at home…
When you play this damn many games, the schedule is bound to be rife with issues. Especially since the two leagues aren’t split geographically. You just can’t expect every opponent to have a compelling rivalry.
Hell, who knew that over the past few years that Oakland and Boston would develop a rivalry, probably would have been nice to see them play more times instead of those 18/19 Red Sox - Baltimore tilts per year.
Thats not to say there isn’t value in generating regional rivalries. If things keep going at the rate they are, there could and up being a fairly decent Yankees - Devil Rays rivalry. Something that probably couldn’t have happened with a balanced schedule.
In short, pick your poision. Sportwriters need some originality.
Don’t even get me started on the whole NCAA football playoff drivel…
True, but you can make the same arguement regarding unblanced divisional opponents. Look, the Orioles are going to get stuck playing the Yanks and Red Sox almost 40 times every year, while the White Sox get to play the Twins and Indians (the closest thing to perennial power houses in that division). Thats about as unfair as it gets.
You can’t bitch about the effect on balance of a couple of interleague games when something like this happens all over the league for 19 games (instead of a whopping 6).
If you’re going to play 162 games without a salary cap, you’ll be getting some unfair stuff. There’s no reason Interleague is more of a voilation than the rest, people just like to rail on it since it’s fairly new and very obvious.
Totally agree with the OP. You take the good with the bad, and wait for things to change. This year’s snoozefest matchup might be the hottest series of the year 5 years from now. You just have to wait for it. Believe me…as a Cubs fan, I’ve gotten used to waiting. (And waiting…and waiting…and waiting…)
I agree with the OP’s reasoning but I still dislike interleague play. I’m a Cleveland fan and I much prefer seeing the Tribe play the Orioles, Blue Jays, A’s and Red Sox more, who are old line AL rivals, than seeing them play the Padres, Reds or Mets. While I can understand why the Cubs/White Sox and Yankees/Mets fans get hyped up about their interleague rivalry, those rivalries don’t mean a thing to me.
But I’m a dinosaur, I know. I want them to go back to 2 divisions per league too, and bring the Brewers back to the American League where they belong.
Well, I think the unbalanced schedule should be a bigger concern than people make it out to be. I mean, the Cubs are playing the WSox 6 times this year, while the Cards get KC for six games. At the end of the year, when teams are separated by just a couple wins (say 90, instead of 85), you can look at those 6 games and think, wow…
I don’t like it because AL ball and NL ball are different games – the DH leads to different strike zones, which leads to different umping and different pitching. This is the same reason I seethe whenever I see USAToday’s headlines reporting that a Pennant-winner is going to the World Series. Yes, they are, but that’s not the big news.
All umpires work both leagues now, so there’s no reason to believe the strike zones are still different. That used to be true when AL umps looked over the catcher’s head, and NL umps over the catcher’s inside shoulder. There isn’t nearly as much difference between individual umps anymore, either, with Questec in place in all parks, and the umpires’ union humbled.
I don’t have much issue with real, natural rivalries getting scheduled every year - playing a good one is no different than playing a league rival who’s on a hot streak. I do have a problem with MLB attempting to promote artificial ones, like Boston-Atlanta - nobody in New England has cared about the Braves since the early Fifties. That’s why they left.
The “unbalanced schedule” is the scheduling of intradivisonal games more than interdivisional games. For example, the Cubs play the Cardinals 16 times this year, while they only play the Braves 7 times.
Keep in mind that the NL Central has 6 teams, so our schedule is slightly less “unbalanced” than the other divisions were there’s 5 teams (4 in the west) meaning they typically play between 18 and 20 games against each opponent and only 7-8 against everyone else in their league.
For a little extra elaboration, back in the day before Selig made the change each team played every team in their league about 12 times, regardless of division.
Here’s a couple interesting links:
First a USA Today article writen shortly after the changes were anounced that details the arguements from both sides.
Frankly, I was for it when they announced it, I’ve since changed my mind.
One somewhat unintended side effect seems to have been the creation of top and bottom heavy divisional races. Almost every season since the change there has been a couple teams duking it out for the top of the division and the rest deep, deep in the cellar. Before the change, this happened occasionally, but it seemed that the finishes of the teams seemed to be more evenly dispersed, with one team 5 games back, one 10, one 15 and so on. Now its 2 teams within 2 games of each other, and 3 teams 20 games back. Could be coincidental, but I don’t think so. I suppose it’s a matter of debate which is better for baseball.
Once upon a time every team in each league played each other team in their league an identical number of times. No team had a “harder” or “easier” schedule. If you had the best record in your league you were the best team in the league.
Nowadays even teams within the same division don’t have identical schedules, or even against all of the same teams. One lucky NL team gets to play against perrenial basement dwellers Tampa Bay for one series every year. The Mets get to play the perennial powerhouse Yankees every year. Someone gets an edge. Maybe a half a game, maybe a game. (As a Boston fan it has irked me that while the Yankees get to play the Mets Boston has to play the Braves. While both rivalries make sense, since interleague play began Atlanta has been consistently better than the Mets. Granted it only irked me mildly and only during the week of that series, but still. Since October I’ve been mostly over it. Mostly.)
While it may seem like I dumped an OP and ran, I’ve actually been sitting here nodding my head very astutely and agreeing with every single post, except perhaps for zamboniracer who probably also wants a return of the the old Polo Fields and pitchers who recorded 50 decisions every season .
Not surprisingly, it seems like there is no answer to this problem. So maybe we should tackle another question: when are we going to have a quality replacement for Morgana? Please tell me that William Ligue Jr. isn’t the only thing we have to look forward to?
That’s exactly the reason I DO like it. I like seeing a little variety and watching Blue Jays pitchers have to hit. A few years ago one of them (Mark Hendrickson) up and swatted a home run.
Omniscient, the lack of spacing you perceive in how teams finish in their division is probably not a product of an unbalanced schedule, it’s probably just that there are fewer teams in a division now. It only makes sense that you’ll have bigger gaps between teams when you have fewer teams.
I don’t have too much of a problem with the unbalanced schedule. It makes sense to me that you’d want each division to be decided by competing against the division. Is it “fair” that some teams have easier divisions than others? Maybe not, but barring serious realignment you’re not gonna fix that.
As far as interleague, I’m firmly in the camp of if you have to do it, don’t do it every year. I could get behind doing it every other year IF you have a natural rivalry (Yanks/Mets, Cards/Royals, Cubs/White Sox, Giants/A’s, Dodgers/Angels.) If you have to have everyone play an interleague series, try to make them make sense. Have Arizona play their expansion team sister the Devil Rays.
It’s not just that some divisions are easier than others. Within each division some teams have a schedule that is (a teensy bit) easier than others. Not a big deal, but not exactly fair either.
I don’t know if I buy that, RickJay. Where’s a sabermetrician to do a study of the standard deviation of a team’s record in large (ie 6/7/8 team divisions versus 4 and 5 team divisions) when you need one? It isn’t intuitively obvious to me that the smaller a division is that necessarily the spread between the 1st and 4th place team is bigger. Wasnt the old NHL Norris 4 team division pretty competitive every year?
And rpinrd, I don’t really want to go back to the Polo Grounds era. I like the DH fors instance. Just take me back to 1992 or thereabouts, with certain exceptions which allowed me to attend the 1997 World Series game I saw my Indians win.
Oh man. You want to talk about going back to a certain era, your comment about the Norris Division really brought back memories. Give me the Campbell and Wales Conferences any day. Sorry to say that Norris and Adams are the only divisions I can remember.
