Why don't baseball teams face every other team during a season?

The Game Room
1

Being a basketball fan, I have the luxury (or detriment) of seeing every team face every other team in the league at least twice a season. To me, that seems like the natural order of things. I mean, how can you compare the strength of one team against another if they face different teams during the year?

To my knowledge, hockey does this too, and since the NFL season is so short, I can see why they dont.

But baseball has like 162 games a season and about 30 teams. Considering the big stink from traditionalists back when they had interleague play, I now know its sort of a big deal when a team from one league faces a team from another. My question is, why? Is it simply tradition?

If so, hasnt enough people got the sense to say “this is wrong, how can we compare the NL champ to the AL champ if they dont face some of the other teams during the season?”

2

There are two reasons for this, one historical and one practical.

  1. Historical: The American and National Leagues were, historically, genuinely separate leagues who originally tried to put each other out of business and made peace in 1903. So they did not play each other during the regular season because, well, they were different leagues. Over time they eventually merged, little by little, into what is essentially one organization, but full merging still hasn’t happened.

Baseball fans LIKE this. They like the leagues being separate and different, and take pride in their league as opposed to the other.

  1. Practical: Baseball is played every day.

Because baseball is played every day - unlike any other major team sport - the season must, practically speaking, be set up as a series of series, whereby a team plays one mini-series after another against opposing teams. The series are usually 3 games long, though on some occasions you see 2 and 4 game sets.

If you wanted every team to play every other team there’s no mathematically practical way to do it. 162 games would mean each team would play each other team either 5 times or 6 - you’d have to figure out a way to divvy it up, since it doesn’t divide. So you’d by necessity have every team play every other team in the majors in just two series and a very great number of those series would be two-game sets, which would increase travel time, fatigue, and cost. Any deviation from the 5-or-6-game-per-opponent system would mean a radical imbalance where you’d have to play some teams just 3 times a year.

And of course such a system means that you would be playing divisional rivals very little, while playing pointless games against teams you’re not in competition with just as often.

As it is the expansion to SOME interleague play is significantly disruptive and imbalancing in its effects on the schedule, and opposed by a lot of fans.

3

That presumes that you need to have teams play all other teams equally, which is not a given. You could play each of the teams in the opposite league three times (in a 3-game series), for example, and that would only account for no more than 48 games in the season. Half would be home games, half would be away games. There would be some complications with the leagues being uneven, but basically it would it amount to the NL playing more NL games because there are fewer AL teams and vice versa. Of course if you went to league-long interleague play, you could move the Brewers back to the AL and have a few interleague games all season long. There would be virtually no difference for travel time than there is now.

4

The disadvantage with this system is twofold.

  1. You’re ensuring one team has all 3 games at home in any given interleague matchup, and

  2. 104 games doesn’t scan well for intraleague play. Sit down and do the math; there’s something wrong with every arrangement you care to put together. Of course, it doesn’t work well now, either, so that wouldn’t be any worse, I guess.

I suspect that most baseball fans preferred the pre-interleague system whereby teams played 12-18 games against league opponents. I like some aspects of interleague play and I’d miss it, but the unbalanced schedule, I have to admit, is unfair.

There’s no easy way to balance the schedule, keep interleague play, AND a Wild Card system. You could expand the AL to 16 teams and then go to a four-division format but that virtually guarantees worse playoff teams (the saving grace of the wild card is that the second best team in the league always makes the postseason; under a 4-division system this might not happen and the likelihood of losing teams making it in really shoots up.) You could stick with the wild card and eliminate interleague play but I don’t like uneven division sizes.

5

#1 is true now, except for the “natural rivals” series (which I’ve actually come to like, especially going to Milwaukee to see the Twins play there.)

#2 I don’t have the time or inclination to do the math, so I’ll take your word for it. :slight_smile:

6

Tradition is part of it, but I think the very nature of the game is the biggest factor.

Pitching matchups change every game and make an enormous difference. As such, it makes sense to play relatively fewer teams many times per year, rather than playing a large number of teams 3 times per year each.

7

And then there’s the fact that the two leagues play by different rules…

8

Not wanting to ignore the obvious - are you ignoring the World Series? Isn’t a 7 game post-season series sufficient to compare the NL and AL champs?

9

Another reason would be scheduling. NBA and NHL games can’t get rained out. While there are some messed up schedules under the current system, it is usually possible to make up rained out games fairly easily. Having a lot of teams that are only in a city for 3 days out of the year could make for a very chaotic schedule, especially for the more remote teams.

10

The other part of this is that, in baseball, a 3 game series tells you very little about who is the stronger team. In basketball, the Lakers aren’t likely to lose to the Kings 2 out of 3, but in baseball the Nationals are more than capable of winning a series against the Yankees. In fact they did.

11

That makes sense I guess. I hadn’t considered that baseball is one of those sports where your best player doesnt play every game.

I’ve never played baseball though, so if someone can tell me this: how difficult would it to pitch back-to-back games? Does your arm really stay sore for 3 or 4 days afterwards?

Sorry, I should clarify that what I meant was how can the 2 WS teams be said to be evenly matched if they play against entirely different opponents and with different rules. I guess other people sorta answered that for me though

Out of everything in baseball, I think this bugs me the most. I only recently (in the past couple of years) found out that different leagues actually have different rules. WTF?? Doesnt that throw the whole competitive balance thing into question? I dont see how it would not be like if the NBA’s 2 different conferences had different sized baskets or if one football conference had bigger fields than the other. Does this bother anyone else? I cannot for the life of me fathom baseball fans just ignoring the rule differences between leagues and thinking the leagues are essentially equal

Speaking of which, does it bother anyone else that baseball fields are different sizes? This is another thing I cant wrap my head around. It seems everyone talks it up as some kind of benefit

12

It bothers everybody. But it bothers them in different ways. It bothers AL fans that the NL doesn’t have a designated hitter, and it bothers NL fans that the AL does have one. Each side can live with the difference better than they can live with adopting the other league’s rule.

Does it bother people that every golf course is different, or every auto race course? Some sports are better on a standardized field, and some are better with a little variety. Baseball is one of the latter.

13

The leagues aren’t equal. Nobody suggests they are. That’s kind of the point – it doesn’t make sense to treat the two leagues equally in writing up the schedule, because they ain’t equal. And, as RickJay alluded, partisans of each league (which is mostly determined by which one contains your hometown team) think the game “their” league plays is better. Indeed, the umpiring corps were separate until nine years ago.

It is a benefit. It means that players and managers have to be on the ball enough to adapt their style of play to the park in which they find themselves. And while you can put together a roster that really suits your home field, you play 81 games somewhere else, which might give that same line-up a lot of trouble. Plus, the different parks each have character of their own.

–Cliffy

14

Baseball is one of those sports that’s hung-up heavily on tradition. That’s 100% of the answer to your question (ok, maybe 95%, but still the largest part). Different leagues with different rules, 162 game (162? Seriously?) seasons, oddly-shaped parks of varying sizes, it’s all because of how it started and people’s resistance to change. Honestly, I wish every major North American sport league had a simple rule that you played every team in your league at least twice, once at home and once away. I’m more of a hockey fan, so for me that would make the NHL season 58 games long instead of 82, but I’m fine with that. I have a very, very, very hard time watching baseball not because I don’t find it interesting (I do, and HD baseball is beautiful to watch) but because I just can’t bring myself to give a shit if the Jays win or lose the particular game that is on tv because there’s 161 other ones thrown in the mix.

Just be careful, though. Baseball fans hang on to their traditions hard.

15

It’s not really possible in today’s game. Even relief pitchers who only pitch an inning or two can’t go every day.

In hockey, the older rinks used to be different sizes, there were shallow places on the rinks where the pucks would slow down when the wood shown through. On the old Boston Garden basketball court there were dead spots where the ball barely bounced. Football stadiums have swirling wind patterns, domes have lighting differences, etc. I love that ball parks are different. It’s a great part of the game.

16

I can understand this to a point, and think that the expansion of the playoffs has a lot to do with it. Originally the regular season determined who won the league (the pennant). There were no “playoffs”, and certainly no “Wild Card”. So, every one of those 154 games was vitally important - each one could determine whether you won the pennant or not. The World Series was added to allow the champions of the two major leagues to play each other after their seasons had ended.

Now, with the leagues pretty much integrated, and the Wild Card making a mockery of pennant races, the idea of unbalanced schedules does seem a bit odd. But back in the day, every team in the National League would play every other team in the National League the same number of times, home and away, to determine a champion.

This Wikipedia article gives a good overview and shows how the schedule was a lot more “logical” back when the leagues were independent.

17

When I am President of the world, the designated hitters will be first against the wall.

18

Just to be pedantic, the 162-game schedule was adopted before divisional play started.

And the thing is, logically, every game is just as important with 4 playoff spots as with one; in fact, the odds are that MORE games will be important, since there is a greater likelihood of teams being in competition for playoff spots. Almost every year now a playoff spot is decided by a very narrow margin. That was not true in the past.

19

This is absurd – expanded playoffs make many, many more games relevant and meaningful.

I’m not crazy about the 3-division format myself, but there’s no denying that more playoff spots leads to more meaningful games, leaguewide. In an 8-team, no playoff league, half of the teams are eliminated by August 1 in most years. With five-team divisons, most teams still have a chance until much later in the season.

20

I just want to riff on this for a sentence or two.

A professional baseball pitcher is paid to destroy his arm. In other words, the act of throwing a pitch actively injures the pitcher’s muscle, bone and connective tissues (ligaments and tendons). No other act in sports does this that I know of. Even in an incredibly rough sport like the NFL it’s not the act of the player that leads to injuries normally but the acts of other players.

On scheduling and the length of season the simple fact is that determining which team is better than another in not entirely possible over 162 games. Most people don’t acknowledge this but the season is not long enough to guarantee that random factors do not overwhelm talent in determining winners and losers.

This is a part of the fact that baseball is, by far, the major American sport with the most inherent balance. Look at the top winning percentages from recent years for the major sports:

Hockey
2008 .654
2007 .722

Basketball
2008 .805
2007 .805

Football
2008 .813
2007 1.000 (!!!)

Baseball
2008 .617
2007 .595

In fact, the highest MLB winning percentage, the 1906 Chicago Cubs, came in at .721. So the highest EVER winning percentage was topped by six of the seven top teams in the other three sports.

If anything, more games would be required if the overall concern was to use the regular season to determine the ‘best’ teams make it to the post-season. But that would get out of hand pretty quickly.

For that matter, I did a study for SABR several years ago (it didn’t make print, dang it) in which I determined that even if the regular season did bring the top eight teams to the post-season the eventual World Series winner was essentially random. In my study I attempted to chose the ‘best’ team by contrasting winning percentage, team OPS, team ERA, and several other factors and found that only in the extreme where on playoff team was clearly dominant in all or almost all of the factors I used was there any tendency towards a winner. Otherwise which team took home the trophy was spread almost at random with teams that were worse in many factors, sometimes in all of them, winning. It was startling.

On the schedule, I personally liked the elegance of the National League schedule prior to the recent wave of expansions. Twelve teams in two divisions means that a team plays the other five teams in-division 18 times (9 home and 9 away) and the six teams in the other division 12 times (6 home and 6 away). As I said, elegant. But expansion and interleague have given that an axe to the neck. Now we need to just work it as best we can.

A balanced scheduled on both leagues? Agh. Playing each of the other 29 teams six times each (one series home and one away) would lead to a 174 game schedule. Elegant again, I admit, but you might as well just flip a coin and save people the time and effort. There’s simply too many teams and too few days off to make that work.

Or, to quote a great man…