A Fix for Interleague Play

We are in the middle of inter-league play. Manny Ramirez and the Dodgers are coming to Boston. It is going to be an exciting weekend, but the last series with the Diamondbacks does not get circled on any fan's schedule in January nor does the All-Star Game unless it is in your home city. A few slight schedule changes could assist in making inter-league play tolerable for even the purists. As my colleague mentioned a few days ago, inter-league play generates too much revenue to be eliminated in the near future. But below is a plan to alleviate the two major negatives to those contests: too many games and the unbalanced schedule.

Is it Time to Get Rid of Interleague Play?

This will be the fourteenth season of interleague play in the Major Leagues. Perhaps the most controversial of Bud Selig's innovations, interleague has had a good run with some wonderful moments, but it has also produced some head-scratching matchups, highlighted the gap in talent between the American and National Leagues, and introduced a level of imbalance that is, at least in my view, antithetical to the spirit of baseball. Despite the revenue boost it has given some clubs, it may be time to end - or at least reduce - the interleague experiment.

Evan Brunell’s 2010 MLB Predictions: Does Boston win it?

As the advent of spring training games are upon us, I thought I'd kick off everyone's favorite little exercise by providing my own personal predictions as to how I think the season will shake out. Now, before I do so, a word of caution: predictions can change daily based on events. Heck, my predictions change multiple times a week. But I've gotta make predictions at some point, right? Point being, I might disagree with my own predictions a week from now. Most of the time, these kind of predictions are an exercise in fallacy, but it's not going to stop me from trying. I don't know why I made things harder on myself, but I set out to present an exact record. This means I had to go into a spreadsheet and make sure all the wins and losses totaled the correct amount of games while also balancing out to a .500 record. Took me a while, but dadgum it, I did it. One thing I did not control for was the unbalanced schedule (in a total record sense), but I already strained my tenuous math skills, so I wasn't about to complicate it further. Click "read more" or the headline to find my predictions.

2009 NL East Preview

Now, I could talk myself into a few of Washington's pitchers doing better than we'd expect; Cabrera, Zimmerman, Olson. But Cabrera has always had trouble with his control, so expecting him to "get it together" isn't logical. And Scotty Olsen has some makeup issues as well. Zimmerman is very young, and young pitchers are, well, see: Clay Buccholz, Phil Hughes, Ian Kennedy, Homer Bailey, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc...etc.

Junichi Tazawa: Japanese pitcher headed to US

As has been common knowledge, 22-year old Japanese pitcher Junichi Tazawa requested that the Japanese pro league, Nippon Pro Baseball, not draft him in the amateur draft, allowing him to jump to the major leagues immediately.

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