Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
March 27, 2007
Better Schedule

Balls, Sticks and Stuff notes the Phillies may end up with a much easier schedule than the Mets:

For instance, the Phillies play the Blue Jays, Royals, Tigers, White Sox and Indians, each for three games, during interleague play. The Mets on the other hand, will face the Yankees (two three-game series), Twins, Tigers, and Athletics. The 2006 winning percentage for the Phillies' 2007 interleague opponents is .509, while the Mets opponents are .590.

Of course, the Indians and Blue Jays could turn out to be better teams than last year, and who knows what happens if a team has to face Gil Meche twice! I also wouldn't be surprised if the A's and Tigers fell off a bit from last year. So it may turn out that the schedule is a lot closer than it looks.


Posted by David Pinto at 05:24 PM | Scheduling | TrackBack (0)
Comments

Pat the Bat's not hitting, the bullpen is rough, Garcia and Lieber are hurt... I'm clinging to anything.

Posted by: Tom G at March 27, 2007 08:34 PM

Fair enough. Last year the Phillies played 3 more interleague games than the Mets and had to face the Red Sox for 2 series. Of course, they couldn't even win a series from the D-Rays, so it's not as if they deserved a playoff berth...

Posted by: Chris R at March 28, 2007 11:43 AM

This is a very marginal difference considering we're only dealing with 1/10 of the season. I'd be surprised if this scheduling difference is worth more than 1 game on average to the Phillies.

Posted by: Frank at March 28, 2007 12:42 PM

re: interleague play

this might make a difference if charlie manuel, who used to manage in in the american league, actually planned out his roster to take advantage of the DH in interleague games away, but he never does this. Again and again he ends up starting poor hitters or indifferent hitters at dh or outfield in such games instead of calling up a good hitter that can't field from AAA right before such contests and adding them to the roster.

the most obvious candidate to dh is Pat Burrell, who no longer can field.

Symptomatic of Manuel's lunacy in this regard is his release of Karim Garcia in favor of keeping an extra infielder. Clearly if you're going to be playing at least twenty interleague games on the road, you're going to need a fifty or sixty outfielder in order to dh Burrell, and Garcia would have been a perfect lefthanded bat to add to Rowand and Victorino in the outfield.

now the phils only have michael bourn an untested rookie. last year david delucci got nearly 300 ab with this team. do they really think garcia would have gotten fewer?

again, with interleague play, an nl team has to design its roster for al play, carrying fewer pitchers and more hitters.

--arthur j kyriazis, philly

Posted by: arthur john kyriazis at March 30, 2007 12:00 PM
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