I hate interleague play.

[Moose Milligan]

8 hours ago, OrangeTurtle said:

Or, perhaps people want to see fresh faces or have opportunities to visit opposing stadiums they have never seen before where the Orioles are actually playing? 

Very weird thing to complain about or to have issues with, IMO.

If anyone really wants to see Wrigley, they can go anytime to see the Cubs play.  Same for PNC in Pittsburgh, Citi Field in NY, etc.  

See fresh faces?  What is this, a modeling scouting trip?

[Griffey]

Not a fan of interleague play because to me it ruined what was unique about baseball, where the leagues only competed against each other in the World Series and All-Star games.  That used to make it special and differentiated it from the other Big 4 leagues.  With an odd number of teams in each league now it's a necessity, but what I'd like to see is something along these lines:

14 games vs. each division opponent (56 games)

10 games vs. every other league opponent (100 games)

6 games vs. "rival" from other  league (or rotate the opponent) (6 games)

[Sanfran327]

Now that the NL has the DH, it's barely interleague anymore. Might as well go with the NFL/NBA/NHL model and just mix up the schedule completely at this point (i.e., even more interleague play). There's absolutely zero novelty about it, but I do like the variety. I had a great time watching the O's play at Wrigley back in 2014 (IIRC), even though we lost both games I attended.

[Yardball85]

12 hours ago, Moose Milligan said:

We can agree to disagree. 

Yup,, no problem with that. 

[deward]

I liked interleague play better when the NL didn't have the DH. I enjoyed the novelty of having to play under different rules for a series or two. It also made the WS feel a bit more special to me when it was a matchup of two teams that hadn't seen each other that year. With the universal DH in play, I don't guess it matters anymore, they might as well bring every team in every year so that fans can see all the stars. I just liked baseball better with two leagues that were clearly distinct; I'm instinctively opposed to any push to homogenize things.

[DrungoHazewood]

My wish is that one day we eventually get to 3-4 geographically aligned, eight or 10-team leagues with limited or no interleague play. You essentially never have a regular season game more than one time zone away.  For a team like the Orioles most of their road trips would be an hour, hour-and-a-half flight.

It's funny, MLS will get soccer players from Europe used to entire countries (UK, Germany, Italy) roughly the size of New England.  They come here and are like "What the holy hell, you're telling me I have to fly five hours to a game nine times this year?  Maybe I'll just stay and play second or third division soccer back home where most of the games are within a few hour drive." We just accept that insane travel and 10:30pm game starts are the norm. Doesn't have to be that way.

[Moose Milligan]

Nooooo @DrungoHazewood, we've gotta watch the Orioles play the Giants because it's interesting!  

[Tony-OH]

20 hours ago, Porky said:

I have never understood the hate on interleague play. Even more so now with the universal DH. They're all baseball teams. Baseball teams playing baseball teams. Baseball will be played. The games count. Every other sports league does it. The pitchers will throw the ball and the batters will try to hit it. Baseball.

Now that the universal DH is finally a thing, I'm fine with it as well. 

[Tony-OH]

1 hour ago, DrungoHazewood said:

My wish is that one day we eventually get to 3-4 geographically aligned, eight or 10-team leagues with limited or no interleague play. You essentially never have a regular season game more than one time zone away.  For a team like the Orioles most of their road trips would be an hour, hour-and-a-half flight.

It's funny, MLS will get soccer players from Europe used to entire countries (UK, Germany, Italy) roughly the size of New England.  They come here and are like "What the holy hell, you're telling me I have to fly five hours to a game nine times this year?  Maybe I'll just stay and play second or third division soccer back home where most of the games are within a few hour drive." We just accept that insane travel and 10:30pm game starts are the norm. Doesn't have to be that way.

One of the things I've liked a bit is that the West Coast teams have been starting their game times earlier when East coast teams come into town.

Saying that, I tend to agree that new Geographical Divisioning would actually be a good thing. 

[deward]

1 hour ago, DrungoHazewood said:

My wish is that one day we eventually get to 3-4 geographically aligned, eight or 10-team leagues with limited or no interleague play. You essentially never have a regular season game more than one time zone away.  For a team like the Orioles most of their road trips would be an hour, hour-and-a-half flight.

It's funny, MLS will get soccer players from Europe used to entire countries (UK, Germany, Italy) roughly the size of New England.  They come here and are like "What the holy hell, you're telling me I have to fly five hours to a game nine times this year?  Maybe I'll just stay and play second or third division soccer back home where most of the games are within a few hour drive." We just accept that insane travel and 10:30pm game starts are the norm. Doesn't have to be that way.

And play the Yanks and Red Sox even more than we already do? No thank you. Plus, I can't imagine that MLB would ever consider it to be in their best interest to place such restrictions on which cities their marquee players show up in, and I suspect they would probably be correct.

[DrungoHazewood]

17 minutes ago, deward said:

And play the Yanks and Red Sox even more than we already do? No thank you. Plus, I can't imagine that MLB would ever consider it to be in their best interest to place such restrictions on which cities their marquee players show up in, and I suspect they would probably be correct.

That was much more of a concern when the only way to watch the Giants from Baltimore was three times a year on the Saturday Game of the Week.  Today?  I can legally watch every single Giants game with an MLB subscription, and every day's highlights on Quick Pitch. If you're not exposed to the players on the other coast its because you don't want to be.

[interloper]

Strange take IMO. I'm so bored of the AL East opponents that any team we haven't seen in awhile is always like 1,000 times more interesting to me. 

[spiritof66]

Once the impotent Commissioner manages to bring the Oakland and Tampa Bay fiascos to a conclusion and two expansion franchises are ready to put teams on the field, I think there will be serious discussions of geography-based realignment  into two 16-team leagues, each with two eight-team divisions that are geographically clustered. That may take another ten years, but I think that's where we're headed. No interleague play; rivalries like Mets-Yankees and Guardians-Reds would be baked into the schedule. Each team could play 14 or 15 games against each of its seven division rivals and seven games against each of the eight teams in the other in-league division.

The divisions might look something like this:

Selig League
Cincy
Chicago
Chicago
Cleveland
Detroit
Milwaukee
Minnesota
St. Looie

Baltimore
Boston
NY
NY
Philadelphia
Pittsburgh
Toronto
Washington

Manfred League
Arizona
Las Vegas
LA
LA
Portland
San Diego
San Francisco
Seattle

Atlanta
Denver
Houston
KC
Miami
Nashville
Tampa
Texas

 

 

 

[MurphDogg]

I like seeing all the players, missing out on seeing half the teams so we can see the our divisional rivals almost 50 percent of the time is stupid.

I like seeing different Major League stadiums, having the opportunity to see the Orioles play as the visiting team makes the experience even better.

Interleague play is good, especially now that we have the universal DH.

Having a fully balanced schedule without separate leagues would be fine too.

[deward]

1 hour ago, DrungoHazewood said:

That was much more of a concern when the only way to watch the Giants from Baltimore was three times a year on the Saturday Game of the Week.  Today?  I can legally watch every single Giants game with an MLB subscription, and every day's highlights on Quick Pitch. If you're not exposed to the players on the other coast its because you don't want to be.

And if you want to see them in person, playing against your home team?