Yesterday, Major League Baseball answered the pressing question that had existed ever since the Astros' move from the NL Central to the AL West next season was announced: "How are they going to make the schedule?" Well, there's going to be an interleague series every day of the season. We already knew that. With 15 teams in each league, it would've been impossible not to do that. But how many games against who remained a mystery until yesterday.
There are elements of the new schedule that I like. For starters, Opening Day is back where it belongs. On the first Monday in April. That Thursday-Wednesday schedule they tried for the last two years simply didn't work. Thursday is not Opening Day. It's hard to get up for a midweek game the way you should for Opening Day. Opening Day is an event that needs to be treated as such. Besides, football has its Thursday night opener. Baseball should have its Sunday night opener. I'm glad it's back. (And as awesome as the final day of last season was, the season shouldn't end on a Wednesday. It should end on a weekend. When fans can actually come out to the ballpark. Flipping between the NFL and the final day of the baseball season has always been part of the fun on that last Sunday in September.)
Now you only play two series against each of the non-division teams in your own league, one at home, one away. This was going to be the tricky part (since there was also that one extra home series you played with somebody in the past), but I like the solution they came up with. One of the main purposes of the realignment was so that teams in the same division would have as close to an identical schedule as possible. The randomness of who that extra series would've been against (say the Yankees got the Tigers and the Red Sox got the Royals, that's the same strength of schedule argument used regarding interleague play) could've determined a pennant race, which is what they were trying to avoid. So, now it's 19 games against your division and six (four teams) or seven (six teams) against the other two divisions in your league.
I also like it that interleague play is going to be a lot less random. Your guess as to how they determined the matchups previously is as good as mine. This year it was East vs. East, but the Yankees played the Reds and had a home-and-home with the Braves, yet didn't play the Phillies (who they faced at home two years in a row) or Marlins. I kind of understood this in the National League since two NL teams had to play against each other even during interleague play, but it really made no sense with the American League teams. Next season, teams in the same division will actually all play the same interleague opponents with the exception of their natural rivalries. (It also really, really bugged me about the old schedule that the Dodgers have never hosted the Rays or visited the Yankees and the Mets have never hosted the White Sox, all of which will finally change next season.)
And interleague play everyday is going to be awesome! Sure, that Angels-Reds Opening Day matchup is kinda weird, but it's just a new little wrinkle that's going to be fun. It'll be interesting to see how teams adjust to having to play an interleague series in the middle of a pennant race, too. The reason I like spreading out interleague play, though, is that teams can't really get screwed by their interleague schedule anymore. How many times in the past couple years has an American League team played nine straight interleague road games, forcing them to take their DH out of the starting lineup for a week and a half? Sure, you'll still have your six-game interleague trips (if you go to the West Coast, for instance), but those are a lot more manageable.
However, I'm not enamored with the new interleague format. First off, I don't think they needed to increase the number of games from 18 to 20. That, of course, means you have 10 home games and 10 road games. The only way to make that math work is four games with one team, split into two two-game series. Everybody hates two-game series. I thought the whole point was to bascially eliminate them. You also haven't eliminated that randomness, since you have to play that extra interleague game against somebody.
The number of interleague games between natural rivals has been dropped from six to four. I realize that in my proposed schedule, I had the natural rivals playing only one three-game series except in the three years it would be division vs. division, but that's mainly because I think the 18-game format (six three-game series) made the most sense. I suppose the reason they didn't do that was so that they'd continue to be guaranteed to play in both ballparks each season. And I guess that was the only way to accomodate for the week everybody has to play three series because of the All-Star Break. But I really don't like the idea of having Mets-Yankees and Cubs-White Sox and Dodgers-Angels relegated to midweek instead of the weekend.
What really confuses me about the new interleague format is what happens every third year when the natural rivals' divisions play each other. Do they play eight games in those seasons? That's too many. Or do they play six and figure out the four two-game sets? Since the corresponding divisions played each other this season, MLB doesn't have to worry about that until 2015, but I still wonder if any thought has been put into that situation. Or if they'll come up with something different entirely by then.
With everything that has to be considered and everything that goes into it, it must be incredibly hard to create a schedule for 30 different Major League Baseball teams. This much I know. The Astros switching leagues probably made things a little easier, but I'm sure there were plenty of problems that came about, too. But judging this schedule on first look, I think they did a great job implementing this new format. Only time will tell if the format works. And if it doesn't, they'll change it.
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