Last month we were teased with only 3 games of interleague play. Tonight starts the 17 day event and I wanted to re post what I wrote about
Interleague Play starts again tonight
interlague play last month.
The fans love interleague play as attendance increases 10% for interleague games. The players on the other don’t love it. In a recent survey approximately 70-75% of MLB players said they did not like interleague play. Interleague play started in 1997 but has the novelty worn off?
Interleague play gives rivals matchups that previously would not have existed. If you live in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, the Bay Area, or Missouri there are huge rivalries between the two teams in each city and interleague play gives us these matchups that we otherwise would not have seen. But with some of these matchups also comes some awkward matchups. No one is getting excited about a Rockies and Tiger matchups. Also each team plays about 18 games so they’ll have six games against a rival and the rest against another team that isn’t nearly as exciting.
Also when American League teams travel to National League stadiums the pitches have to bat. These pitchers aren’t used to batting and running bases and it can lead to injury which happened last year to Yankees pitcher Chien-Ming Wang, who suffered a foot injury running the bases last year during interleague play.
In the past before interleague play baseball was the only sport which didn’t have interleague league. The only time we got to see teams in different leagues square off was in the World Series and that made baseball different. It gave baseball a unique characteristic that no other sport could match.
I think interleague should stay in baseball but it needs to be modified. Fist only have it be six games with each team having a home an away series. Let all of the rivals and teams that are located close to each other play once and alternate home every year. For the other series have everyone matched up randomly and rotate every year so at least you get a chance to see some matchups you might never have seen but you don’t overkill it.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
