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As I wrote last week, the league can only do so much to create meaningful baseball in September given its priorities. The win distribution will be what it will be, and some years it won’t map well to the playoff structure. The league can only do so much; plan out a lot of divisional matchups in September, and you may not get the ones you need for late-season drama.
The piece the league does control, though, is interleague. MLB made a big deal of its everybody-plays-everybody scheduling last year, and that has its fans. Building 46 interleague games into every schedule comes with a cost, and that cost is currently paid in September. The season’s final weekend probably will have more interleague series (three) than important head-to-head ones. The Royals play their last game against an AL team on September 18. The Yankees play 15 of their final 34 games against the NL, just seven against the AL East.
The piece the league does control, though, is interleague. MLB made a big deal of its everybody-plays-everybody scheduling last year, and that has its fans. Building 46 interleague games into every schedule comes with a cost, and that cost is currently paid in September. The season’s final weekend probably will have more interleague series (three) than important head-to-head ones. The Royals play their last game against an AL team on September 18. The Yankees play 15 of their final 34 games against the NL, just seven against the AL East.
