Inspecting Interleague Play

The 14th season of Interleague play officially began last night in Major League Baseball, and like any other "tradition", it needs some spicing up.

While I was originally a big fan of Interleague play, I feel that the cons outweigh the pros. If Interleague baseball is going to continue, there are some things that need to be tweaked. However, hoping for constructive changes from Bud Selig is like hoping for Bob Sanders to stay healthy.

Interleague play hasn't been much of a struggle for the AL

Here are some of the issues I have with the current state of Interleague baseball:

1) The novelty has worn off
- even the great rivalries like Yankees/Mets and Cubs/White Sox don't have the same allure that they used to have.

2) The American League has become far too dominant
- the AL has won the season series for six years running, with an alarming 714-546 edge in the past five years.

3) Most of the so-called "rivalry" games are a joke
- does anyone really care about the Ohio Cup (Reds/Indians), Marlins/Rays (Citrus Series), Twins/Brewers, etc.?

4) Scheduling inequities
- due to the designated rivalry, the Cubs get six games against the recently contending White Sox (.500 or better in eight of the last ten seasons, '05 champs) while the Cardinals get six versus the usually dormant Royals (one season over .500 since Interleague play began).

5) The "filler" games
- for every Yankees/Mets series, you have five "nobody cares" matchups like Rays/Astros (Planetary Series), Cubs/Rangers (Sammy Sosa Series), Rockies/Royals (The Ro-Ro Series), and Blue Jays/D’Backs (Do Snakes eat Birds? Series).

My solutions are simple. Kick Houston over to the AL West (where they belong) so you have even five-team divisions in each league. Just like in the NFL, each team plays a division every year that is rotated (i.e. an NL team would play the AL West in 2010, AL Central in 2011, AL East in 2012). You would still get the great games/players coming to your parks, and it would happen more frequently (once every six years) than in football (once every eight years). 15 of your 18 games will be against a specific division, while the other series would be with a designated "rival". For instance, the the Yankees/Mets, White Sox/Cubs, Angels/Dodgers, etc. would still play every year, but only one three-game series (instead of two). The home parks can rotate every other year.

I like Interleague baseball, and I don't necessarily want it to go away. But, the current format is tired and these changes can only help.