Throwing you a bender because I just thought you should know...
The beauty, magic and hope of Spring Training is upon us again. Everything about this rite is wonderful and gives us glorious peeks into the upcoming season, so I started peeking. I found young new players in the spotlight, veteran players on new teams, GM's and fans alike with ridiculous dreams for their teams...and then I analyzed the literal path those teams will take to reach the World Series in October. Ugh.
It doesn't seem to have been mentioned much and no one seems to be raising a big stink over it, but baseball has really messed up the 2013 schedule. With the player's union having such a large influence, and the owners having opportunity for increased revenue, we now have two 15 team leagues, consisting of six divisions with five teams each. While this seems logical and practical on the surface, it sends baseball in a bad direction and moves it closer and closer to hockey and basketball as conference sports.
We will now see interleague play all year long, without any specific window or hype for those events. American League pitchers used to have a short period in season where they took batting practice and ran the bases in preparation for those games. It was then relegated to the back burner after that unless a team was preparing for post season play. Now, do pitchers prep and practice this all year long for the random times they will need it?
The Indians play in NL parks in mid May, at the end of May, the first week in August then again during the last week of August. Rather random as baseball is concerned. The Tigers have the same randomness and even finish the last three days of the season in Miami, a National League park. It should be interesting to see manager Jim Leyland tearing his hair out when he has to pencil in Verlander to hit instead of Victor Martinez with the playoffs on the line!
It will be quite strange having to take into effect during the pennant races that teams will be switching back and forth between AL and NL rules. This may even lead to further changes down the road involving the DH and how it may lead to being adopted in NL parks during interleague games and eventually, adopted in the NL altogether. This becomes a valid possibility with the MLBPA favoring the DH as a way of employing another high priced, veteran player and GM's getting on board after one big time pitcher is sure to get injured through this current schedule while hitting or running.
Even more importantly, baseball has reduced head-to-head intradivisional matchups that usually finish the season. While some still exist, there are definitely some strange endings on the schedule. As mentioned, the Tigers finish in Miami, The Nationals have the Cardinals and Diamondbacks to complete the season and the Yankees end by playing the Giants, Rays and Astros.
In addition, for some unknown reason, MLB has the season concluding on September 29 which happens to be a Sunday during week 4 of the NFL. So any possible exciting finish (remember Game 162, 2011 the greatest night in baseball history?) will be competing against football at 1:00, 4:15 and then, of course, a Sunday Night game.
With over 2400 games to schedule, nothing is ever perfect, but MLB has really caved in based on going to the two 15 team leagues. Owners wanted it for television scheduling purposes and perceived better playoff chances. Since everyone now has a 1 in 5 chance of winning their division (AL West was 1 in 4 and NL Central was 1 in 6 before,) owners feel this is fair. Since teams compete against the entire league for Wild Card spots, eliminating the previous interleague schedule and balancing divisions was favored by players.
Let's just hope MLB sees the risks this schedule implies and corrects it for next year. For now, we are stuck with it, but hopefully MLB will adjust it going forward and allow baseball to retain it's uniqueness. Staying different from basketball and hockey is a good and necessary stance.
Now back to the batting cage for you pitchers!
All this because I know more about nothing...
