{"id":6462,"date":"2013-04-17T09:52:38","date_gmt":"2013-04-17T13:52:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=6462"},"modified":"2013-04-17T09:52:38","modified_gmt":"2013-04-17T13:52:38","slug":"which-nl-playoff-contenders-are-helpedhurt-by-interleague-schedule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=6462","title":{"rendered":"Which NL playoff contenders are helped\/hurt by Interleague Schedule?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Spurred into action by this <strong>Dave Cameron<\/strong> SI.com piece, where he postulates that <a href=\"http:\/\/insider.espn.go.com\/mlb\/story\/_\/id\/9159431\/atlanta-braves-teams-hurt-new-interleague-schedule-mlb\">Atlanta isn&#8217;t as well constructed<\/a> as other NL playoff contendors (including Washington) for constant intraleague because they don&#8217;t have a natural power hitter on the bench (like we do in <strong>Tyler Moore<\/strong> and\/or <strong>Chad Tracy<\/strong>), I asked myself this question: \u00a0Which probable NL playoff contenders are going to be helped or hurt by their intraleague schedules this year?<\/p>\n<p>(Note: I&#8217;ll skip the obvious answer to Cameron&#8217;s above question: who cares how well constructed you are when you start the season 12-1? \u00a0And, had Cameron waited about a week to write this the answer may have very well been Atlanta&#8217;s out-of-nowhere find\u00a0<strong>Evan Gattis<\/strong>, who clearly can serve as an interleage DH very ably).<\/p>\n<p>Going down the line, looking just at intraleague opponents you get this list (3 game sets unless denoted):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/teams\/WSN\/2013-schedule-scores.shtml\">Washington<\/a>: Home to Chicago White Sox, Detroit (2), Baltimore (2), Minnesota. \u00a0Away to Cleveland, Baltimore (2), Detroit (2), Kansas City.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/teams\/ATL\/2013-schedule-scores.shtml\">Atlanta<\/a>: Home to Kansas City (2), Minnesota, Toronto (2), and Cleveland. \u00a0Away to Detroit, Toronto (2), Kansas City (2), Chicago White Sox.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Head to head, you have to say that Washington has a slight inter-league advantage over Atlanta; they have to play defending AL champs Detroit 6 times to our 4, they have to play Toronto four times instead of our Baltimore (a slightly tougher matchup). \u00a0The games involving Cleveland and Chicago are probably a wash. \u00a0Atlanta&#8217;s &#8220;natural rival&#8221; right now is Toronto to our Baltimore, which likely hurts them this season.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/teams\/CIN\/2013-schedule-scores.shtml\">Cincinnati<\/a>: Home to Los Angeles Angels, Cleveland (2), \u00a0Seattle, Oakland (2). \u00a0 Away to Oakland (2), Texas, Houston, and Cleveland (2).<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/teams\/STL\/2013-schedule-scores.shtml\">St. Louis<\/a>: Home to Kansas City (2), Texas, Seattle, Houston (2). \u00a0Away to Kansas City (2), Houston (2), Oakland, Los Angeles Angels.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>St. Louis doesn&#8217;t play a single AL team until May 27th, and plays 8 of their 10 away AL games IN A ROW in mid June. \u00a0This is a pretty massive scheduling advantage that lets them modify their roster for one big AL road trip and basically not have to worry about the away AL games the rest of the season. \u00a0Head to head as compared to Cincinnati, you&#8217;d have to give a slight edge to St. Louis again, for getting those two extra games versus Houston. \u00a0Otherwise these two slates look pretty even.<\/p>\n<p>Either way they&#8217;re both considerably more difficult than what the NL East teams face, thanks to the games against the AL West playoff-calibre teams. \u00a0 Half their games are against LA, Texas and Oakland while the Nats only have to worry about 4 Detroit games (unless you think that Baltimore is going to be a playoff team again, which I don&#8217;t).<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/teams\/SFG\/2013-schedule-scores.shtml\">San Francisco<\/a>: Home to Oakland (2), Toronto (2), Baltimore, Boston. \u00a0 Away to Toronto (2), Oakland (2), Tampa Bay, New York Yankees.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/teams\/LAD\/2013-schedule-scores.shtml\">Los Angeles<\/a>: Home to Los Angeles Angels (2), New York Yankees (2), Tampa Bay, Boston. \u00a0 Away to Baltimore, Los Angeles Angels (2), New York Yankees (2), Toronto.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Ouch; the NL West guys have AL East heavy interleague schedules this year. \u00a0I&#8217;d say that the Giant&#8217;s slate is slightly harder; Tampa Bay and the Yankees and four games against Toronto versus three for the Dodgers. \u00a0Oakland vs Angels as a natural rival seems like it will be slightly harder on the Dodgers (but, Oakland is starting right where they left off and may be a playoff team at the Angels&#8217; expense again).<\/p>\n<p>But again, either way you have to think the NL West teams are worse off than the NL East teams this year for interleague looking at their slate.<\/p>\n<p>All of this may be helpful to teams trying to get a wild card spot, which we all hope will be Atlanta and not us. \u00a0Because we all now know what can happen if you slip to the one-game wild card play-in. \u00a0Just ask Atlanta and Texas what happened last year, when two teams who I thought both had the capability of winning it all were knocked out in a coin-flip game.<\/p>\n<p>By the way, today on April 12th, the NL standings after 9 games basically already mirror the above scenarios in terms of Division leaders and wild card contenders. \u00a0The only anomoly would be Arizona being in 2nd place by a game in the NL West. \u00a0The cream rise to the top quickly it seems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Spurred into action by this Dave Cameron SI.com piece, where he postulates that Atlanta isn&#8217;t as well constructed as other NL playoff contendors (including Washington) for constant intraleague because they don&#8217;t have a natural power hitter on the bench (like we do in Tyler Moore and\/or Chad Tracy), I asked myself this question: \u00a0Which probable [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[835,449,1718,235],"class_list":["post-6462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonnatsbaseball","tag-chad-tracy","tag-dave-cameron","tag-evan-gattis","tag-tyler-moore"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6462"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6501,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6462\/revisions\/6501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}