...And Another Season Of Interleague Play Is In The Books

2007's round of Interleague Play came to a screeching halt last night with the conclusion of the Tigers/Braves and Astros/Rangers games. I watched the former last night and it turns out the latter was the more interesting game. Sigh...

So once again, the AL beat the NL senseless and took its lunch money. In other shocking news from The Vatican, turns out The Pope is catholic. I broke it down by division, and here's what that looks like:

AL East: 45-45, .500
AL Central: 48-42, .533
AL West: 44-28, .611

NL East: 38-43, .469
NL Central: 43-50, .462
NL West: 34-44, .436

So the AL won 137-115. The shining examples of AL's dominance were the Tigers and Angels, who each went 14-4 in Interleague play this season. Meanwhile, only six NL teams finished interleague play with winning records. The only NL teams to finish more than one game over .500 against the AL were the Cubs and the Rockies. The 8-4 Interleague Cubs clearly took advantage of their limited schedule, winning 5 of 6 against the White Sox (including the sweep this weekend), who had their asses handed to them by the NL this year (4-14). You could point out the fact that the Rockies swept the Yankees earlier this week, but they promptly got swept in Toronto this weekend, so that doesn't explain their 10-8 Interleague record. Series wins against Tampa Bay, Baltimore, and Boston explains it. Though they did lose a series to the Royals. Go figure...

So what now? I'm not really a baseball purist, but I'm thinking Interleague Play should be scrapped. The AL has always won Interleague play (please leave a comment if I'm wrong about this) since its inception. The other sad reality is the lack of intriguing matchups. You have five (Mets/Yankees, Cubs/White Sox, Astros/Rangers, Dodgers/Angels, Giants/Athletics) and that's kinda it. I also don't think it's an accurate representation of how a team fares against the opposing league. Think about it: This season, the Yankees play as many games against the Red Sox - 18 - as they did against the entire National League. AND the Cubs only played 12 games against the American League - half of which were against a horrible White Sox team! So yeah - either add more Interleague games to balance it out a little more or scrap the whole thing.

But at least we got to see a no-hitter during Interleague play this year. We almost had two...