Thursday, June 19, 2008

I Hate Interleague Play.



Could it be sour grapes from dropping 2 of 3 to the goddamn Red Sox at home?

Sure could.

But I am not a fan of anything in sports that smacks of pure gimmickry.

Glowing pucks? Worst. Idea. Ever.
Designated Hitter? Ridiculous.
The trapezoid behind the goal? Why?
The shootout? Shoot me.
The shootout, soccer division? How can a world wide tournament be decided by a skills competition? How about a game of UNO Attack instead.
Aluminum bats? Do sportswriters wax poetic about the "ping" of the bat? I think not.
The NBA? Waste of time.

Interleague play is an abomination visited upon one of the most tradition-bound sports. It's a pure money grab by the league and the team owners. Some 100 years went by without the Leagues playing until the Fall Classic.

MLB foists these ridiculous "rivalries" on teams that have no history. Phils-Red Sox? San Diego-Detroit? Seattle-Anyone in the NL?

Sure, the Subway Series and the Show-Me Series and the Citrus Series may pique some interest, but why not play them in the pre-season and award a nice, shiny trophy? Why do we need to interrupt the divisional races for a Phillies-Rangers series? Who cares?

Beyond the fact that all of this seems like nothing more than a Fox-Trax type gimmick, it is blatantly unfair.

How, you ask? Let's look at the numbers.

(A couple of caveats before we delve into my tens of minutes of research: 1. I know that the scheds are made prior to the season and there is no way to figure how teams will be doing by the time Interleague play rolls around; 2. I know there is an imbalance in the number of teams in each league. Bottom line: two great reasons to abolish interleague play once and for all. More on this later.)

Just parsing the NL East, the only division I care about at this juncture:

The Phillies play 15 games against 5 different teams who have a combined W-L record of 199-166 and an average team ERA of 3.98.

The Mets play 15 games against 4 different teams (I guess the subway series is a best of 6?) who have a combined W-L record of 143-147 and an average team ERA of 4.49.

The Marlins play 15 games against 4 different teams (I guess the citrus series is also a best of 6) who have a combined W-L record of 136-150 and an average team ERA of 4.10.

The Braves play 15 games against 5 different teams who have a combined W-L record of 178-184 and an average team ERA of 4.15.

The Nationals play 18 games against 5 different teams (Baltimore twice? The team whose owner tried to keep baseball out of DC for so long?) who have a combined W-L record of 176-184 and an average team ERA of 4.51.

How is this fair?

Teams spend the lion's share of a baseball season playing against their own division to win a quaint little thing called the pennant. They spend a little less time playing against the other teams in their league (roughly the same number of games as the other teams in their division) to round out the competition. Then suddenly they have to play against the other league?

It would be one thing if this was the NFL and the whole division played games against another whole division or the NHL where each team played a home and home against every team in the other conference (which they hopefully will return to shortly), but it's not. There is not a single common AL opponent that all NL East teams play this year.

Ditch Interleague play, now. It's useless. It's annoying. It breaks up an exciting season of intra-division games. At the very least, shelve the stupid thing until the divisions have an equal number of teams and the NL East can play the AL East and so on.

What's that? The Mets still have to play 6 against the Yankees? The Nats still have to play 6 against the O's?

Why? Money?

My point exactly.

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