Give the West a rest

I happened upon ESPN Radio on the Deuce this morning while trying to enjoy my breakfast, and guess what? They were ragging on the National League's West Division again. Although the tide has turned a bit since this post, and the NL East now has more wins than the NL West, the real culprit dragging down the National League is the Central.

The Dodgers are in a virtual tie with St. Louis for the second best record in the NL, and the Padres have a better record than Cincinnati. San Francisco and Houston have identical records, Arizona's is better than Milwaukee's, and Colorado's is far better than both Chicago's and Pittsburgh's. So if anybody's making the playoffs in undeserved fashion, it's the Cardinals, right?

Except the Cardinals are only 32-32 against their Central division foes, worse on average than most of the rest of the NL (Philadelphia is also at .500, Washington is 16-17, and Colorado is 14-22). St. Louis has stayed afloat in the Central by beating up (19-6) on the NL West. Go figure.

It may be about time to haul out the annual rant against interleague play and the unbalanced schedule, two too-often-praised Bud Selig brainchildren. These two intrusions into pure baseball both introduce inconsistencies in "strength of schedule" for the various teams.

A big part of the problem is the realignment that put Milwaukee in the National League and created one six-team division (namely, the woeful NL Central) and one four-team division (the AL West) so that each league would have an even number of teams. The result of this stupidity is that AL teams each play 18 interleague games, but most NL teams play 15. That in itself is okay, since comparisons between AL and NL records never count for anything. The problem is the "most". The exceptions this year are Philly, Florida, Washington, and Houston, who played 18 apiece. None of these teams is over .500 in those 18 games (Florida is 9-9). In the whole National League, only San Francisco (8-7) and Colorado (11-4) were over .500. So basically the Phillies and Astros were handed three extra games that they were likely to lose. I'm sure they're thanking Selig for that as they make their run at the wild card.

If there were 15 teams in each league, there would have to be at least one interleague series happening all the time, but that would be okay, because a total of 252 interleague games are played. And the imbalance would disappear.

The unbalanced schedule is only deplorable because of that other recent addition, the wild card. (There's also the home field advantage issue, but that at least doesn't change who makes the playoffs.) Cincinnati and San Diego (the current front-runners) will be measured by their overall records, even though they are achieved against very different opponents. Cincy is 38-30 against their own division, and 8-14 against the West. The Padres are 28-30 against the West, and 17-9 against the Central. If we were to (naively, I admit) average their winning percentages against the three divisions to create a "balanced" schedule (throwing out interleague play, where they are close anyway), the Reds would have a .480 record, while the Padres would be at .536. Instead the Padres have a piddling 1.5 game lead.