Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Interleague Baseball

I hate Interleague Baseball! It's slanted against the American League teams.

If the game is played in a National League park, the AL team loses its Designated Hitter, and its Pitcher has to hit. Lose-lose for the AL team!

If the game is played in an AL park, the NL team gets to play an extra hitter, and its pitcher does not have to hit. Win-win for the NL team.

This is all profit-driven, of course; some team rivalries sell more tickets, like New York/New York, Chicago/Chicago, and the Angels/Dodgers, but what's in it for the fans who are offered Colorado/Toronto?

More interesting might be for Toronto to play Detroit or Oakland or Cleveland more often. In fact, teams in a strong division, playing against their divisional rivals 19 times means less movement within divisions than when they played more games against teams in other divisions. The Wild Card situation means that a team that gets clobbered in its own division can still be stronger [have a better record] than the leaders in the other divisions, but not make their way into the postseason.