Un-Ticklish Blunder of the Week - Interleague Play

Few times of the year can compare to the start of a new baseball season. The weather is warming up, anticipations are high and the ballpark franks are looking tastier than ever. After a few weeks or so, teams start to define their own identities for the campaign: certain pitchers really lock in, sluggers step up and start regularly belting their yard balls, hit-for-average guys get into their groove, bullpen arms begin to settle into their roles.

Then, for a series in May and a few weeks in June, the rules of the game suddenly change, strange teams start coming to town and every team’s rhythm seems to be thrown off.

First, for a complete list of the “pros” of interleague play, read this article from The Onion.

Although interleague play does allow Mariners fans the thrill of seeing players like the Padres’ Brian Giles, the Tickle City of the Week committee just can’t get behind it, especially after it drags on week after week in June, just when division races are starting to get interesting.

Big rivals meeting each other in the World Series is supposed to be one of the most special times in sport, a rare, rare chance to see bitter foes squaring off in a game that matters so much. How is this feeling not destroyed by the teams playing each other a bunch of times every single season?

The Committee agrees, though, that nationwide excitement over the “Beltway Series” between the Orioles and the Nationals does reach a fever pitch. The MLB itself would likely crumble if these rivals did not meet 6 times every season. The same can be said for the “Citrus Series” between the Marlins and Rays, the “Battle of Ohio,” the “Bay Bridge Series,” and the aforementioned battle of the Peoria, Arizona Spring Training foes, the Mariners and Padres, who also play a yearly home-and-home series.

For concerns of space, we won’t even get into the DH arguments against interleague play, which are plentiful. The Committee also won’t be citing the Chien-Ming Wang example, when the former ace injured himself running the bases in an NL park and it directly caused him to become a terrible pitcher.

Lastly, if you intensely scrutinize the standings, you may discover that the divisions do not have equal numbers of teams. This causes various severe strength of schedule inequalities between teams. Divisions do indeed square off against each other, but because of the disparities someone gets to skip the good team and someone else doesn’t get to beat up on the last place team, for example. It’s just not fair.

And did anyone see Bartolo Colon bat last season? That was just painful...