There were already two double headers scheduled for tomorrow, and with a number of postponements tonight, the number is growing. It looks like there will be at least four in the AL on Saturday and one in the NL, with the Philadelphia double header happening on Sunday. I still haven't seen word on what will happen with the White Sox postponement.

The Cubs and Astros are likely to play a double header somewhere on Sunday also.

Toronto certainly plays a schedule that let's them serve as a spoiler. The defeated the White Sox this afternoon 3-1 behind the seven innings, one hit pitching of A.J. Burnett. The only run he allowed was unearned. Including the nightcap, Toronto plays three more against Chicago and seven against the Red Sox.

That, and the fact that the Yankees only play Boston three more times lends a bit of credence to the idea that Toronto is more in the race than the Yankees. New York needs to depend on Toronto and other teams to bring down the Red Sox while Toronto can do it on their own.

Peter Abraham notes the Yankees have a legtimate beef about their schedule this week.

I didn't realize until just now that the Atlanta-Washington game last night was a one-game series. Washington travels to Philadelphia today and the Braves host the Pirates. I guess ESPN really wanted that opening.

WasWatching reviews the Yankees horrid April schedule. It's the Pope's fault.

The original schedule had a more balanced April. But after it was completed, Pope Benedict scheduled an April 20 mass at Yankee Stadium. So some Yankees home games were flipped to accommodate the event and its preparation.

I assume Dana Jacobson won't be the MC for that event. :-)

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Home Run Derby starts a series on imbalances in the 2008 interleague schedule. Somehow, the Cubs avoid both the Yankees and Red Sox but get to play Tampa Bay, Toronto and Baltimore.

My solution to this is a total division realignment with five six-team divisions. Each team plays 90 games against their division rivals, and 36 games each against two other divisions, and those rotate from year to year. Of course, they'd need to do away with the AL and NL, have five division winners and three wild cards. But at least the schedule would be somewhat sane.

My latest Baseball Prospectus column is up. This week's column continues the discussion from the previous week on realigning baseball into five six-team divisions. A subscription is required.

Chipper Jones complained about the interleague schedule on Sunday:

"It's a factor (in the pennant race)," Jones said. "We play Boston six times, and they've got the best record in the American League. We play the top three teams in the toughest division in baseball (the AL Central). We, without a doubt, have the toughest schedule in baseball, bar none. You don't play in our division and play the interleague schedule we play and not say we don't have the toughest schedule."

If you own a subscription, I tackled this subject in my Baseball Prospectus column last week, and I'll revisit it this Wednesday as well.

My latest Baseball Prospectus column looks at a way to realign divisions to make scheduling easier and avoid they kind of problems the Mariners suffered this year. A subscription is required.

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.

Baseball Girl at Athletics Nation explains why she doesn't like interleague play:

Yet, I absolutely despise interleague play. Actually, the more I think about it, it might not be interleague play that I dislike so strongly; it might actually be National League baseball, and the A's playing it. Which is why I'd like our team to be left in the American League until forced to play a World Series. I might like interleague play then.

The funny thing about interleague play is that I really feel like I genuinely dislike it for the right reasons. It's easy for a fan of a team that doesn't play well during interleague to complain, but I'm a fan of a team who has a sensational interleague record, and I still hate it! It's also worth noting that our current A's team probably would be better off in the NL right now: Their choices for DH consist of their back-up catcher, Mr. .007 batting average, or a pitcher, anyway, and with the NL's microscopic strike zone, we'd walk our way to victory nightly, but I still can't get behind the idea.

I don't agree with this, however:

I can't stand the mysteriously shifting (and more often than not, small) strike zone, something that seems more prevalent in the NL than the AL. In Nick Swisher's first AB yesterday, there were two questionable pitches taken by Swish, who has a tremendous batting eye, and my feelings were summed up exactly by Swisher's reaction. He turned to the ump, and said something to the effect of, "Seriously?", but using the cuss jar.

Yesterday's strike zone started out the size of Texas against the A's, and about as big as a breadbox for Danny Haren, but slowly shrunk for both sides, until both pitchers needed pinpoint control to ring up a strike. That trend continued into today, where both pitchers were squeezed from the get-go. The Giants reacted by having a walk-a-thon; Loaiza reacted by giving up doubles.

Given there are ML umpires these days, instead of NL and AL umps, I'm not sure why this would happen.

Athletics Nation takes a look at the 2006 schedule for the Oakland A's. One highlight:

The A's take on the Paul DePodesta-less LA Dodgers in June at home. As a matter of fact, the A's take on the NL West this season, which should help their travel wear and tear. No trips to Pittsburgh or Philadelphia are needed. The NL West was also the worst division in baseball last season, so this could help the A's excel in interleague once again.

I don't like the current division setup. I don't like divisions being of different sizes, and I especially don't like the haphazard scheduling.

One of the problems is that you're trying to fit a schedule into a number of games (162) that was designed for a ten team leauge (18 games vs. every team), but also works very well for a league with two six-team divisions (18 games vs. divsion rivals, 12 games vs. teams in the other division).

One nice thing about six-team divisions is that you can have stretches where all the games are in the division, and all the games are outside the division. This was how the AL and NL were before expansion to 14 teams each.

In the past, I've written about reorganizing the leagues to eliminate the wild card and recreate better schedules; this usually means going to eight divisons, which means expansion. But if I'm willing to keep the wild card, we can have nicer scheduling without expansion.

The AL and NL are historic artifacts. There are no longer separate league offices; AL teams play NL teams during the regular season. The only difference between the AL and NL right now is the designated hitter. So let's drop the leagues and form five major league divisions.

Five divisions of six teams would yield five division winners. The playoffs would be brought up to eight teams with the addition of three wild cards, the three best 2nd place finishes. Teams would play 18 games against each of their division rivals for 90 games. The remaining 72 games would be divided among 12 teams from the other four divisions, three games home and three games away. Matchups are based on the standings from the previous seasons. The teams finishing 1,2,3 play all other 1,2,3 teams. The teams finishing 4,5,6 play all the other 4,5,6 teams.

I like setting up inter-division play like this because it gives a team that's on the rise a better chance to make the playoffs. It also provides an incentive for teams to be good; if you're good, you get other good teams to visit you, which should bring in more fans.

Here's how I see the divisons shaping up under this scenario:

1. The East Coast Division
• New York Mets
• Philadelphia Phillies
• Washington Nationals
• Atlanta Braves
• Tampa Bay Devil Rays
• Florida Marlins
2. The Northeast Division
• Boston Red Sox
• New York Yankees
• Baltimore Orioles
• Pittsburgh Pirates
• Cincinnati Reds
• Cleveland Indians
3. Upper Mid-West
• Toronto Blue Jays
• Detroit Tigers
• Chicago Cubs
• Milwaukee Brewers
• Minnesota Twins
• St. Louis Cardinals
4. The Spread Out
• Chicago White Sox
• Kansas City Royals
• Houston Astros
• Texas Rangers
• Arizona Diamondbacks
• Colorado Rockies
5. West Coast
• Seattle Mariners
• San Francisco Giants
• Oakland Athletics
• Los Angeles Dodgers
• Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
• San Diego Padres

Under this arrangement, the division winners would have been:

• Braves


• Yankees


• Cardinals


• Astros


• Dodgers

and the wild cards would have gone to Boston, Anaheim and Minnesota. Same teams as actually were in the playoffs in 2004. Playoff pairings can be based on record, with all division winners getting a higher seeding than wild card entrants. You can even do the division winner can't play a wild card from the same division so you can wind up with a Red Sox-Yankees semi-final.

My guess is that you'd get a better mixing of teams than we're currently getting with interleague play. The Cubs and White Sox might not play every year, but it would be pretty close to every other year. And if you're going to get the big draws into your stadium, you have to play well.

I'd love to hear comments on this.

Here's an interesting article on baseball scheduling. The company that has been making out the itenerary for the last 24 years lost its bid this year to continue. As a programmer, I would find the task of writing the software a challenge. You'd want to accomodate specific dates teams wish to be home. You'd want to minimize travel distances as much as possible. I would think you'd want to try to schedule division play late in the season. It will be fun to compare this schedule to last year's and see if there are real differences.

Jayson Stark of ESPN.com and Derek Zumsteg of Baseball Prospectus each offer their views on the Yankees forfeit request. Neither is kind to the good folks at the commissioner's office.

Update: The weather report doesn't look good for NY today. I wonder if they are going to get either game in today.

Update: Both games have been postponed due to rain. I have not heard about a make up date yet. With the weather looking bad for tomorrow, the Yankees will probably be forced by Bud to play a triple header at the end of the season. :-)

Greg Cote of the Miami Herald looks at the tough schedule ahead for the Marlins:

How many ball games can possibly be squeezed onto a short calendar?

The Marlins are your laboratory rat, being made to wear mascara, smoke unfiltered nicotine and run nonstop on a treadmill wheel to provide the answer.

Is this any way to treat a defending World Series champion?

Marlins manager Jack McKeon joked before Tuesday night's game about tripleheaders and 3 a.m. starts.

At least I think he was joking.

The Marlins have won 8 in a row and have outscored their opponents 47-24, and have not allowed an unearned run in that time frame. The next few weeks will be an upstream swim for the Fish. With six games against the Cubs, however, they have the opportunity deal directly with the wild card leader (a chance the Astros don't have). Winning under these conditions would be all the more satisfying.

In comments to yesterday's post on a balanced schedule, Dean writes:

Do you think that by being in the AL East, they will ever be a strong team in a weak division, barring moving to another division or revenue sharing? That is, will the Yankees or Red Sox ever be a weak team?

My answer is yes, but not very often. The Yankees in particular are approaching a tipping point in terms of age. They are putting out an old starting lineup, and an older pitching staff as well. I can easily see age decline + injuries lessening the impact of that team this year. In other words, lots of things can go wrong. If they go wrong for both the Yankees and Red Sox, the other teams in the division would be at an advantage in a balanced schedule, because they would get to play those weakened teams often. Now, both those teams have money and good management, so I would expect they could plug holes, but stranger things have happened. I remember a season in the mid-70's where the Yankees came into spring stocked with outfielders, and by mid summer they were playing two catchers in the outfield.

The Tampa Bay Devil Rays would prefer to go back to a balanced schedule:

This is not the Rays whining. This is not a team looking for special favors. Naimoli insisted on playing in the AL East when Tampa Bay was being awarded an expansion franchise and he's living with that decision.

So, yes, it is Tampa Bay's responsibility to beat Boston and New York if it wants to be a division champ. That's not the issue.

The problem is the Rays are at a disadvantage when it comes to competing for the wild card. Because the Rays play almost half their games against AL East teams, they have a more difficult schedule than a team from the AL Central or AL West. Thus, they are unfairly handicapped.

At this point in their history, it doesn't matter what kind of schedule Tampa plays. They are not going to compete with anyone. However, they should be careful what they wish for. It could be that someday they are a strong team in a weak division, and then they will be very happy to have an unbalanced schedule.

I like the unbalanced schedule because it makes the an under .500 division champion less likely.

According to this article on ESPN.com, George Steinbrenner is not happy with the interleague schedule.

"Katy Feeney makes the schedule, and she has never been a favorite of mine or a favorite of the Yankees," Steinbrenner said to the newspaper. "We play Cincinnati, which is a fine, fine ball club; they're going to be in the middle of it. Then we play the Cubs.

"Now who is the other guy playing? They're playing against Milwaukee. Now what's right about that? They're playing Pittsburgh and Milwaukee while we're playing Cincinnati and the Cubs. I think they got the best of that deal.

Feeney responds:

Major League vice president Feeney said the schedule was done more than a year and a half in advance. The Yankees will play the Brewers and Pirates in 2005, according to Feeney.

"I can assure you, I do not, and the other schedule contractors certainly do not, purposefully think, 'How can we make life more difficult for the Yankees?' " Feeney said.

I sure a lot of people would like Ms. Feeney to think that way. :-)

Actually, I think the schedules, since they are out of balance already, should be adjusted in the way the NFL schedules are. The NFL is all about parity, and one way they achieve this is to have games outside of a team's division against teams at the same level from the previous year. So, the AFC east champ, if they are going to play the AFC central, will play the top teams from that division; the team that finished last in the AFC east will play the bottom teams from the AFC Central. So if you finish last if a division in the NFL, and are on the upswing, you actually have a pretty good shot of making the playoffs, because you're playing a lower level of competition. I don't see why baseball can't do the same thing.

So the Yankees and A's and Braves would have to face the better opponents from the other divisions more than the DRays or Brewers would. It also provides an incentive for teams to try to win, since they all want the Yankees to come to town, and that will only happen if they are as good as the Yankees.