The old MLB schedules use to be 19 games against teams in your own division 6 or 7 games against teams in your league, 3 or 4 games against teams in the other league but a different interleague division each year on rotation and then 4 or 6 games against your rivarly team such as Dodgers Angels Yankees Mets.
The new 2023 MLB format will be different. Teams will only play 14 games against teams in their own division and 6 games against teams in their league. The big change will be that teams will play every team on the other league 3 times and rotate on home field each years. Then of course they will play their rivalry team 4 times only each year.
IMO I like this new schedule format. This way all teams get to play each other at least one serious of 3 times and not so damn consumed with playing teams in their own division.
Interleague play used to be cool when it was novel, but it’s now a little tiresome in that it results in teams having weird, busted-up schedules. Admittedly, the new schedule is much more balanced, so it has that going for it; I will concede it’s BETTER.
The first thing MLB needs to do is fix the way the major leagues are organized; it makes very little sense to continue on with a three-division system if the first round of playoffs has two byes, not three, AND they are balancing the schedule more. Two divisions, East and West, make more sense now. That would be way more convenient if MLB expanded to 32 teams, of course.
As a Cardinals fan living in Chicago, it’s going to be nice to see them play against the White Sox every other year for a LOT cheaper than a Cubs v Cardinals game.
They do; the OP could have worded it a bit more clearly.
This would have been clearer as “Teams will only play 14 games against each team in their own division, and 6 games against each other team in their league.”
I foresee a serious problems with the new schedule. A typical team in the NL will have 8 home or 8 away series one against each team in the AL (with one each two game series against their rival) They will have 10 home and 10 away series with each team in the NL not in their division. If there is a rainout in any one of those series that cannot be made up during the series, the team will have to make another trip to that city. Make-up games are going to be a real hassle as they’ll require free dates and can’t be added as a double header.
With the advent of the universal DH, what’s the difference?
Interleague play doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the phantom IBB, free man on second in extra innings, and replays “proving” a runner is out when he clearly beats a throw, just because he took his hand one millimeter off the base for a nanosecond.
It’s amazing how quickly they’ve fucked up such a beautiful game.
I guess I’m a traditionalist but I don’t like it. Interleague, while an interesting concept, diluted the idea of two separate leagues. It will be diluted even more now. As a teenager and early adult, I found it special that the World Series between two teams who did not play each other during the season, who may never have played each other in their history. Now, for sure they will have played each other that year.
Playing a few more games against teams in your division was special too. Even if your team fell behind early in the season, you knew there could still be a chance later to catch up in head-to-head play. In the two-division era, you’d typically start the season against divisional opponents, which could help or hinder having a good start against those teams. September was also usually against your division opponents and could make the race more exciting. Today, you may not face a division opponent ahead of you that last month. I don’t find that as much fun.
If I was king of baseball, I’d do away with interleague and go back to playing more games against divisional opponents. Playing only 56 in your own division vs 60 against the rest of the league and 46 in the other league doesn’t seem right. I wonder what MLB will do when it expands.
At this moment, interleague play is a year-long necessity, since there are 30 MLB teams, and 15 in each league; the only way you could get rid of (or even substantially reduce) interleague play is to get back to an even number of teams in each of the leagues.
Expansion, to 32 teams, is the likeliest path to that, but there are few, if any, vestiges left now of the two leagues actually being different organizations, and I suspect that few people in MLB management are looking for ways to make interleague play more “special” again.
Heck, when I was a kid, that USUALLY happened. I started watching baseball in 1980. Between then and interleague play starting, the only times the World Series featured opponents that had ever played each other in meaningful games before were 1981, 1989, 1995 and 1996.