Major League Baseball decided to pull the lever on allowing every team in the league to play every other team in the league last season. Through the years, MLB’s embrace of interleague play has gone from its introduction in 1997 into a full-throated attempt to cover all the ground.
In some ways, that decision made a lot of sense. Fans can go eons without seeing other teams come to play their favorite squads. Every fan should get the opportunity to see all of baseball’s biggest stars at least once during the season. Even if it’s on TV and on the road, it only feels fair.
That being said, not everybody is a fan of the decision. SNY’s Keith Hernandez, a former All-Star for the New York Mets and St. Louis Cardinals, never shies away from voicing his opinion. That trend continued during Thursday afternoon’s broadcast on SNY between the Mets and the Atlanta Braves.
Hernandez and lead voice Gary Cohen discussed the fact that the Mets won’t travel again to Atlanta until the end of this season, in the final week of the year, for a three-game series from Sept. 24-26. Hernandez snarkily declared it to be because of a “glorious decision” made by MLB.
SNY’s Keith Hernandez appears to be no fan of MLB’s “glorious decision” to have NL teams cut back on division games to play AL teams.
“Just do not understand that one bit.”
Gary Cohen noted it also creates more travel, less familiarity, and fewer H2H division meetings. pic.twitter.com/PPcCKQf6FX
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) April 11, 2024
“Thanks to that glorious decision to play all the American League teams and cut back five games. Two series, home and away, in division. Just do not understand that one bit,” Hernandez declared.
“Well, it’s created more travel, less familiarity for the fans with the teams they’re competing with, and fewer head-to-head meetings to decide the division. Which is a huge piece because of the bye involved with the top two division winners in each league,” Cohen added.
“I’ll leave it at that,” Hernandez said after a pause. “Enough said.”
Hernandez and Cohen’s point about fewer H2H matchups is probably the strongest point of this rant. However, the flip side of this is that isolating teams away from each other as they did for so long wasn’t pleasing for others, either. The sense of unfamiliarity with the fans for teams that Cohen speaks of shouldn’t be viewed or thought of as a negative. It’s hard to imagine fans being turned off by the opponent because they’re confused about them. MLB has plenty of issues on the surface and beneath. Scheduling may be one, but it’s hard to envision it being this much of one.
