That was true for Yankees-Red Sox matchups but not the case for most intradivision series. In fact, the league was considering playing even more divisional games, believing rivalries drove attendance and television viewership. They didn’t think they could get the owners’ support for it-that the change was too radical.” Then it was “we can’t until we get the DH in both leagues. “Initially there were about extra travel. But nobody ever really wanted to do it.”ĭePaoli said the league always found reasons to stick with a slate heavy on intradivision games. And everybody thought it was a great idea. I was on Major League Baseball’s first scheduling committee and pitched this there. I met with the former Tony Petitti and Chris Marinak. “I talked to Rob Manfred about it,” he said. He devised a plan that would ensure the Pirates would host top drawing teams more often and presented it to baseball’s leadership “multiple times” over the next 10 years. There is something wrong with the system.” (He isn’t the only one to advocate for scheduling changes through the years.) The Pirates “just had the Yankees in town for interleague play for the first time that year, and to myself, how can that be? Interleague has been going on since 1997.

They went with two and two,” DePaoli said.ĭePaoli embraced a balanced schedule following the 2008 season. His model “had teams playing their interleague rivals six times a year. The only difference is the number of rivalry games. He created an almost exact replica of this plan for MLB more than a decade ago. JWS’ Take: It is no surprise DePaoli supports the scheduling changes.

Mlb schedule for tonight