In so far as rivalry’s with inter league play go…..do Met fans really care about seeing the Twins, White Sox or the Mariners comes to Citi Field?

There was talk of moving the Astros to the American League to enhance their Texas Ranger rivalry and to balance the leagues teams. Doing this enables the math to work out when the schedule looks like this….

Mets play their N.L. Eastern division rivals 18 games each total 72 games

Mets play all other N.L teams 6 games each 60 games

Mets play A.L . East teams 6 games each 30 games

Traveling becomes easier for players…cheaper for owners!

And perhaps most important is that for a wild card team to win the World Series it will be a little tougher and once again make winning the division more important!

Perhaps if all teams played each other in a balanced schedule, with no team having an advantage of the weakest clubs being in their own division (and no inter-league) then the wild card would be fairer. But even this revamping of the schedule would have it’s own drawbacks. Yes, last year’s final day was great but the competition itself was fraudulent – Tampa Bay and Atlanta played teams that already secured their division and treated it like an exhibition contest while Boston played the lowly Orioles who, with their adrenelian running, played like it was the seventh game of the world series.

Baseball always differentiated itself from other sports by having true champions while mediocre teams in NBA and NHL had as equal a chance at winning a championship as those with the best regular season records. Whatever regular season excitement there was dealt with these mediocre teams playing under the “pressure” of securing the last playoff spot. It makes the regular season meaningless. All teams do is secure a seeding in a playoff tournament. That’s what baseball will become with the addition of a fifth playoff team. How many teams with just 84 victories will in turn become world champions?

But of course, we are talking about the integrity of the sport. MLB cares less about that than they do creating artificial excitement to draw more fans. But we’re stuck with it so, like it or not, here’s hoping the Mets make it as a wild card entry. Means no more “we’re number one” chants like we had in 1969 but at least we can now have ones that boast “we’re number five”.

Interest in baseball has been declining for a long time and with the lockouts going on at the time, I think baseball saw an opportunity to gain a bit more popularity. Basketball has 16/ 30 make the playoffs, football has 12/32, baseball –at the time– had 8/30. More often than not, by mid to late August, you are looking at about 10-15 teams at most still in the mix. Basketball and football have AT LEAST half of their teams in the mix by week 14/15 or the last two weeks of the basketball season.

With a new generation of fans gravitating towards football and basketball over baseball, I saw this move as a chance to bring fans back into the ballparks and following the season from start to finish. There are unfortunately not a lot of baseball fans left, strictly a fan of a specific team.

For example, Rockies fans who once the team is out, focus on the Broncos or the the Nuggets instead. Now with the new playoffs, the Rockies have a chance down the stretch, keeping more fans in Coors Field.

Maybe improving the quality of how the game is played would be a better way to go about things. I also think inter league play has run it’s course. I miss the many times the Mets would play the Cards, Cubs, etc. I miss the west coast trips ( 1 time per team is not enough) and I think that has taken away a lot of the natural rivalries that would fill up the park.