Another round of interleague play! How about that Jason Vargas, did he abuse the Phils or what? (Ow!)
And another brainstorm from yours truly:
I know I am not the first person to come up with a proposal like this one. But what if we:
- Move an NL team to the AL. The Milwaukee Brewers, a former AL team, are an obvious choice. The Rockies could work, too, or maybe the Astros.
- Balance the divisions so that each league has 3 divisions of 5 teams. In other words, move the Astros, Rockies or Royals into the AL West.
- Arrange the schedule so that one interleague series is going on at all times, plus seven series in each league.
This arrangement would help to unkink some of the interleague scheduling issues that revolve around the unequal size of the leagues. Plus, it could put more fan attention on the one interleague series that’s in play each week and weekend.
Under this scheme, each year there get to be about 52 interleague series. That’s less than we have presently (~84), which would be OK with me. If you want more, have 3 interleague series now and then – adjust to taste. It would be easy to get close to the current number of interleague games, though obviously with a very different distribution.
For ideas about how to decide which teams play, see my previous post.
Addendum in 2013: Guess what, they did indeed move the Astros into the AL West! However, I believe MLB actually increased interleague play, with teams playing 8 interleague series in 2013. Sigh…
Keys: baseball
