We've reached mid-June, which means one thing to baseball fans: interleague play. Sure they play that one random interleague series in May, but we've got five in a row now, so for all intents and purposes, this is when it starts. I know that, in general, feelings are mixed about interleague play, but, as I've gone on record saying before and will again, I've always been a fan. For those of you who don't like it, we're in the 15th season of interleague play and it isn't going anywhere, so suck it up and deal with it.
The marquee matchup of this weekend is clearly Yankees-Cubs at Wrigley. Two of the iconic franchises of the game meeting in one of the game's iconic venues. This is only made possible because of interleague play. And that's the whole point. Every year, you get one or two series that's so delicious it validates the entire thing. In addition to playing the Yankees at Wrigley, the Cubs already played the Red Sox at Fenway this year. Those are the best two matchups on the interleague agenda this year, but there are plenty of other good ones: Red Sox at Phillies, Rangers at Braves, Cardinals at Rays, Giants at Tigers.
Of course for all of those you also get series like Diamondbacks at Royals, Orioles at Pirates, Marlins at A's or Mariners at Nationals as a tradeoff. These are the series that critics site as reasons why interleague play is stupid. But, this just in, the good teams can't play everybody. The bad teams have to play someone, so they might as well play each other. And Diamondbacks-Royals is really no different than Diamondbacks-Nationals in the grand scheme of things.
The only "problem" that people bring up about interleague play where I can somewhat see their point is the argument that teams in the same division don't play the same opponents. Case in point, the National League Central. The first-place Brewers visit both the Yankees and Red Sox this year, while the second-place Cardinals don't play either one at all. And even though the division pairings are predetermined, teams don't necessarily play only teams from that division. It's AL East vs. NL Central this year, yet the Yankees play the Rockies, the Orioles play the Braves and the Red Sox play the Padres. Some of this is the result of the natural rivalries (Yankees-Mets, Cubs-White Sox, Dodgers-Angels, Rays-Marlins, etc.). There are six interleague series, and the Yankees play the Mets twice. The NL Central has six teams, so that's automatically two they're not going to play anyway.
But even the natural rivalries create the strength of schedule issues that the interleague critics love. For example, the Rangers get to play the lowly Astros six times, while the A's have two series against their natural rival, which just happens to be the World Champion Giants. In that situation, it's obviously advantage Texas. Then there are the teams that don't have natural rivals (Arizona, Colorado, Toronto and a few others). They make up for it by not playing anyone twice.
Part of the beauty of interleague play is getting to see teams and players you wouldn't normally see in your home ballpark. That's my favorite part of interleague play. Yet somehow, there are still a handful of matchup that have NEVER happened in the regular season. The Dodgers have never played in Yankee Stadium or hosted the Rays, yet this season they're hosting the Tigers for the second year in a row. We're 15 years in. There shouldn't be any matchups left that haven't happened before. But there are 11. In addition to the two involving the Dodgers, we've never had Twins at Braves, A's at Brewers, White Sox at Mets, Rangers at Cardinals, Braves at Royals, Cardinals at Angels, Cubs at A's, Brewers at Mariners or Padres at Blue Jays. That's where they need to fix the imbalance of interleague play. Seriously, how come the Dodgers have never played a regular season game in Yankee Stadium?
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like there's a way to have every team in a division play the same interleague schedule. In fact, it's virtually impossible because of the natural rivalries. I don't know why so many people think this is a problem, though. The schedule's already unbalanced. And the National League has two extra teams, so some of them don't even play the same number of interleague games. But even with all that being said, I still don't advocate realignment. Interleague play is a fun little distraction in June. You shouldn't be playing interleague games in September, which you'd have to if there were 15 teams in each league.
With all that being said, despite some of its perceived "flaws," there isn't a thing I would change about interleague play. I would make sure that the only team you see in consecutive years is your natural rival, and I'd make sure those 11 teams that haven't been to a given stadium yet get there, but that's about it. It's fun to watch the American League pitchers hit in National League parks. (I'm not getting into the merits of the designated hitter, which, not surprisingly, I'm in favor of and, not surprisingly, isn't going anywhere either.) Actually, that's the only other thing I would modify a little. I wouldn't make an AL team play nine consecutive interleague road games (Boston, Cleveland, the Angels and Toronto all have to this season). For a team that's used to having a DH to suddenly not have one for more than a week isn't fair.
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