After the one “preview” series last month, the full three-week interleague slate kicks off baseball-wide today.

Aside from the quandary of what to do with Adam Dunn, the start of the interleague slate brings up big-picture questions about the DH, scheduling and radical realignment. Every few years there is some new gimmicky plan to realign all 30 major league teams that awakens the “DH Or No DH?” beast. With owners and players getting ready to sit at the table and bargain changes for 2012, this kind of stuff is headed to the forefront again.

Two things should be clear: the DH needs to stay, and the uniqueness of the season and playoffs need to be preserved. Yesterday Phil Rogers weighed in on the issue, and came up with one of his best lines ever.
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Baseball is at its best when really good pitchers challenge really good hitters. That’s the confrontation that makes the game click, not the automatic strategies in play when the pitcher can’t hit.

He’s completely right. Baseball isn’t about watching pitchers hit. I don’t think the DH will ever be added to the NL, and that’s fine. Unlike a lot of fans, I am OK with two leagues with different sets of rules. There is the NL, and there is the AL. Their separate champions meet in the World Series. It’s unique, and cool. But the day they remove the DH from the AL (hopefully never), will be the day Major League Baseball gets a lot worse.

Then there is this issue of realignment. The new idea is for one NL team (either the Diamondbacks or the Astros) to move to the AL, creating two equal leagues of 15 teams with no divisions. Then, with a balanced schedule, the top five teams from each league make the playoffs.

Actually, I think KenWo4Life over at South Side Sox summarized the pros and cons of this proposed realignment very nicely. It would be more “fair”, but, to me anyway, less interesting.

First of all, I don’t care at all about interleague play. This is, of course, nothing new. Outside of natural rivalries and a few one-off big market match ups, there is no novelty and nothing worthwhile about it anymore. That’s not to say it was a mistake or a complete waste to have interleague play for the past 14 seasons- it was a fun, money-making fan favorite. It’s just that, like a cortisone shot, it wore off after some time. That’s fine- MLB needed an injection after the ’94 strike and interleague play was a clean solution.

But now, in 2011, the issue with keeping it is that some people will whine that two leagues of 15 teams would necessitate one interleague series at all times. And the problem with that is…what exactly?

Let there be exactly one interleague series at all times and call it a day. Like I’ve said, there is no “luster” left to be worn off interleague games, and no revenue to be lost by not having massive interleague weeks. In fact, you could argue interleague would be more special if there were exactly one match up per week. Rob Neyer also wonders why this is even an issue. Next.

So if MLB realigns to two leagues of 15, the DH stays, and one interleague series will be played at all times. The one sticky point is the affect the division-less format will have on the playoffs.

I’ve repeatedly said that I am in favor of expanded playoffs- not adding extra teams, but adding extra competition for the red-headed stepchild of playoff teams, the Wildcard. (Also, the LDS should be best-of-seven. And, to get nit-picky, there should not be champagne celebrations for winning a first round series. But I digress.)

If you realign to have one massive division for each league, there will no longer be such a thing as a pennant race, period. There will be only one race: to see who gets the last playoff spot in leach league, while the top four are coasting. Trading three or four playoff races oer league for one? That’s ridiculous.

Division titles will be meaningless, and as we’ve seen, seeding and home field advantage mean next to nothing in the MLB playoffs. Mediocre teams will be absolutely buried early, and national baseball interest will taper off earlier than it does now.

I agree the NBA and NHL are somewhat watered down in their playoff formats (though not as bad as some make it out to be), but there is a long way between MLB’s current model and the NBA/NHL “watered down” model. A middle ground is fine. Add the playoff team, but don’t kill the divisions and races.

Major League Baseball is different than other sports: it has two unique leagues with slightly different rules and it has meaningful division races and championships. Here’s hoping MLB realizes how special those things are, and doesn’t mess with it.