Saturday, June 9, 2012
I have been against interleague play in Major League Baseball since the Yankees traded George Costanza to Tyler Chicken. Seriously, I am an old-fashioned crotchety fan. I stopped watching the All-Star Game when they made it "mean something" and I do not watch interleague games. HOWEVER, if interleague play is here to stay (and, with the Astros moving to the AL next year making two 15-team leagues, we'll have interleague play every day) MLB should take a page out of the NFL's scheduling playbook. With uneven divisions (one with six teams, one with four) and "rivalry games," the MLB interleague schedule is awful. Teams don't play each other with any rhyme or reason. But, if baseball expands by two teams, they can have a PERFECT schedule for every single year, with emphasis on division games, traditional three game series, home and away balance AND feature games against teams of similar records. See below:

(note: I just list the teams by division. I don't want to give my opinions about realignment now). So here we have it...

Each League has 4 divisions of 4 teams. (N, S, E and W is fine. Or name them after players for all I care.)

Here is a sample schedule for a team from the NL East:

Play each other team in the NL East 18 times: Three 3-game home series. Three 3-game away series. (54 games)

Play each of the other 12 teams in the National League 6 times: one 3-game home series, one 3-game away series. (72 games)

That takes care of 126 games, leaving 36 remaining. Here is one plan for those 36 games:

Then ONE NL division per year is FEATURED. This year the NL East plays NL West, next year the South, the following year the North then repeat (for example). The NL easy plays 4 extra games against each of those 4 teams (2 home, 2 away. Can be worked into 4-game series or played as 2-game series). 16 games.

Each NL East team then plays 4 extra games against the teams in the other two NL divisions with corresponding finishing position from the previous year. The 2013 3rd place NLE team plays the 2013 3rd place NLS and NLN teams in their 2014 schedule. Again, 2 home and two away games, which can be part of 4-game series or 2-game series. (8 games).

The interleague games rotate as well. The NL East will play each division in the AL once every 4 years. Three games per team, 2 series at home and 2 away. So you host an AL team once every 4 years. (12 games)

There are other ways to deploy these 36 games. If you want to focus on interleague play, you can play 24 games against them and remove the extra 12 games against similar finishers, for example. If you want to play MORE games against teams who finished in the same position, you could add games there as well. The idea of expansion is not popular now, but I think it is the only way. MLB needs to look to the NFL for guidance. 32-teams and 162 games works. Let's make this happen.

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