An Alternative Plan for Interleague Play

I have made my take on inter league play plain and simple. I am not a fan. Having said that though I do realize it is not likely to go anywhere as baseball will claim it to be a success year in and year out.

What I do not like is the number of interleague games that are crammed in to the schedule. The Phillies will play 18 games against teams from the AL East this season. Some teams will play fewer inter league games than the Phillies, which of course is not fair. If baseball is going to force interleague baseball on us, I ask they kindly reorganize the scheduling.

I would like to introduce my plan for interleague play and see what you think. It is based on the philosophy that interleague works best with regional match-ups. For example, the fans of the Mets and Yankees likely looked forward to this past weekend and fans of the Giants and A's usually look forward to their teams facing each other. On the flip side, does anybody care when the Nationals play the Mariners?

What if we took away the division-verse-division premise and used a unique regional lineup to determine the baseball contests? And why not limit it to four series over the span of two weeks, and then split the weeks up. Have the first interleague week in May and the second interleague week in June, essentially how it is now. Here is my idea, which I am sure will need to have some wrinkles ironed out.



The way the major league teams are located there are 10 perfect interleague match ups which should not be affected by my regional plan. They are:

• Yankees-Mets
• Orioles-Nationals
• Rays-Marlins
• Indians-Reds
• White Sox-Cubs
• Twins-Brewers
• Royals-Cardinals
• Rangers-Astros
• Giants-A's
• Dodgers-Angels

That leaves us with 10 teams, six from the National League (Phillies, Pirates, Braves, Rockies, Diamondbacks and Padres) and four from the American League (Red Sox, Blue Jays, Tigers, Mariners), with no natural regional rivalries.

The second thing that needs to be resolved is the fact there are 16 teams in the National League compared with 14 in the American League.

To make my plan easier to roll out, I moved the Colorado Rockies to the AL West, and then moved the Houston Astros to the NL West. This gives each division in baseball five teams and gives some continuity to the division line ups. The Texas Rangers are in the AL West, so it makes send to have the Houston Astros in the NL West.

Teams in the NL and AL West divisions are then the easiest "Super Regional" to determine. Five teams out west from each league play each other and let them handle themselves any way they wish.

The next easiest region to sort out would be what I dub the Northeast Super Regional. Two natural rivalries act as the keystone for this region with the Yankees-Mets and Orioles-Nationals. You may as well go ahead and pair up the Phillies and Red Sox together and we'll throw the Blue Jays against the Pirates in as well. Four teams from each league, each getting two home interleague series and two road interleague series. Bam.

All that is left is the Midwest, and those teams down in Florida and Atlanta. Realizing my biggest complaint about interleague is the lack of even scheduling I am coming to the conclusion I may not be able to satisfy my biggest concern.

If there was one more American League team down in the south east this would be easier. A natural super regional would be the Midwest but it can only include four logical match-ups. The Braves and the Rays-Marlins are left to themselves.

Let's pit the Twins and Brewers against each other, the Royals will face the Cardinals, the Cubs will play the White Sox and the Indians and Reds will play interleague ball. All that is left is the Tigers and Braves, so I guess we'll pair those two up in the most illogical inter league match-up.

That gives the Midwest regional five inter league match-ups to rotate. The Rays and Marlins make up their own "regional" so to even things up maybe we can stick them in with the majority of their division foes, or put together some kind of southern regional with the Texas squads, Atlanta and Arizona. Here are a couple possibilities, keeping in mind the Astros are now hypothetically in the AL West.

The unbalanced Florida scenario

The Southern Regional scenario

So did this improve anything? Probably not. So let me ask you. Do you like the idea of super regions, for lack of a better term? How would you expand or improve on it? Or do you hate the idea? If you agree that interleague is here to stay, what changes would you make to it to make it more attractive?