–Matt Belisle’s spot in the rotation is going to be skipped. The Reds will go with the originally-planned starters for the Cleveland series: Johnny Cueto, Aaron Harang, Edinson Volquez.

–Andrew at Redlegs Rundown has a nice profile of newest Red Paul Janish.

–Dusty Baker is complaining about interleague play, and he makes a great point about why it’s a bad idea and unfair to some teams.

–CSG loves rainouts.

–I saw this on SportsCenter, and it’s pretty funny. That Junior is a wacky prankster.

Dusty talked about how we play first place Cleveland as our rival and how some teams, which he’s not naming, have a second tier team as their geographical rival and it’s not fair….Yeah, that team would be Cleveland.

Comment by preach — 5/16/2008 @ 10:46 am

---

In the end if you are worried about three games out of 162, being unfair then your team must be kinda weak. If he wants to complain about the unbalanced schedule, that’s a little more understandable. Still though, if any sport does, baseball does the best job of determining who the best teams are during the season.

Comment by Scott — 5/16/2008 @ 11:11 am

---

Sorry, 6 games, 3 in each park.

Comment by Scott — 5/16/2008 @ 11:16 am

---

Interleague play is a joke. They’ve never gotten it right. The rest of MLB suffers so Fox can have Yankees-Mets, Cubs-White Sox and Red Sox vs. World six teams each year.

What Baker is referring to is that year-in and year-out there are teams that get hammered by their geographical rivals and others that have it soft (Cards-Royals six times, e.g.). If they want to be fair, reduce these rivalry series to one a year, alternate home-and-away.

Do the Reds really need to play Toronto, Tampa Bay, Texas, etc.? No. But if they want to eliminate both leagues and have conferences like the NBA, where you play everyone at least one series, fine.

I mean, what’s the novelty of the All-Star Game and World Series any more? The idea of proprietary leagues died with the very first Yankees-Mets interleague game.

Comment by Mr. Redlegs — 5/16/2008 @ 11:43 am

---

While scheduling so many teams and so many games is a huge undertaking, I have heard many more complaints than usual this season. I was listening to the Indians radio broadcast yesterday and the announcers noted that to date the Tribe had faced the A’s more times than they have faced the rest of the AL Central COMBINED. That’s a little ridiculous. It certainly can’t help your early season attendance. And what is up with all these two game series around the league?

Comment by preach — 5/16/2008 @ 11:54 am

---

I note for the record that in 1999, the doubling-up against a very good Cleveland team ended up being wholly responsible for the Reds missing out on the postseason. (According to pure wins and losses, anyway.)

Comment by DevilsAdvocate — 5/16/2008 @ 12:10 pm

---

It seems to me that if you aspire to be the best team in the league, as all teams do, then you must play and beat the better teams in the league.

Put it this way: The Oakland Raiders, year in and year out, have the toughest schedule in the NFL. Why? Because every team they play is better than them.

Comment by Mark T — 5/16/2008 @ 1:15 pm

---

Yeah, I’m not a fan of interleague. I know it’s great for attendance, but it sets up enormous scheduling disparities among teams every year–not just with geographic rivals, but also the other teams that one ends up playing.

The only thing it’s been good for is helping us clearly see how much better the American League is. Otherwise, it’d be a lot harder to tell…
-j

Comment by jinaz — 5/16/2008 @ 1:19 pm

---

I’d like to see a better study on the attendance of interleague games. We all know the attraction of series like Reds-Indians because you get two crossing fan bases that can come together.

But if you look at the non-rivalry games, minus Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs and Dodgers, what do you really have? Are the numbers skewed because of the rivalry series?

Funny how I never hear anyone say they like interleague, yet we are constantly told the attendance says otherwise.

Comment by Mr. Redlegs — 5/16/2008 @ 1:24 pm

---

One has to wonder why Griffey would owe Fogg any money.

Comment by Matt B. — 5/16/2008 @ 1:58 pm

---

I heard Fogg took several players’ money in a clubhouse poker game during the Mets rainout. Don’t know if JR was one of them, though.

Comment by TylerS — 5/16/2008 @ 2:13 pm

---

I know that a few games over the course of a 162 game season will not necessarily break a team, but when you look at who the Reds have to play compared to the Cubs you have to admit there is an unfair advantage. Cubs avoid playing both the Red Sox and the Yankees (and I know the Yanks aren’t that sweet, but we didn’t know that when the schedule came out).

Comment by Josh — 5/16/2008 @ 4:47 pm

---

picture of Fogg’s locker full of pennies.

http://www.thelotd.com/lance/gallery/view_gallery.one?pid=26650575

Comment by Mike Martz — 5/16/2008 @ 5:26 pm

---

I hate interleague play. The Reds stink at it, and seems like whoever they play just mauls them every year.

I don’t see the point. If you want your team to play the Yankees or Red Sox, get into the playoffs.

Comment by John of Muncie — 5/16/2008 @ 6:00 pm

---

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website