With Full-Time Interleague Play Coming, a Universal DH isn’t Far behind

The opening act of Major League Baseball’s interleague schedule took place this weekend and with it came a reminder that ut is the last we will ever see of this current format.

Beginning next season, the Houston Astros will depart the National League to make their new home in the AL West. In doing so, the two leagues will each have 15 team, each have three divisions of five members. Unfortunately, you can’t very well construct a baseball schedule that forces one team to be off every single day, which is what would have to happen with an odd number of teams, so starting in 2013, we will embark on a season-long interleague schedule.

From the sounds of it, the bulk of the interleague schedule will still be concentrated in the middle two-thirds of the season, but there is no getting around the reality that virtually every single day of the season, there will have to be at least one interleague series taking place. According to Jayson Stark, who broke down the details in his recent Rumblings and Grumblings piece, Major League Baseball will limit the number of interleague matchups in the season’s final five weeks and plans no more than one interleague road series per club in the latter portion of the schedule. In doing things this way, an AL club that employs a full-time DH wouldn’t be forced to play without a key member of their lineup for long or important stretches in an NL park.

Stark notes, and I agree, that while this new system isn’t perfect, it is a much better format for making sure we get as much schedule parity as possible. The way it stands now, there are far too many circumstances where teams from the same division are playing significantly different schedules when it comes to interleague play. That all changes next year, but my gut says it won’t be the last time we see an overhaul of the system.

There was little question over the past few years that the interleague schedule needed tweaked. Players and managers alike were voicing concerns over unfair scheduling and for every hotly-contested Orioles-Nationals series or Cubs-White Sox matchup, there was an equally unexciting Marlins-Royals series taking place at the same time. Baseball faced a question of whether to put a stop to interleague play altogether or to significantly alter their long-held structure. In a move that should have surprised no one who has ever heard Bud Selig speak, the commissioner pushed forward with an expanded version of the interleague phenomenon he created 16 years ago.

This new system won’t eliminate the less-glamorous matchups from taking place, but at least every team will play virtually all the same opposing clubs, so in pushing for two 15-team leagues, Selig and his competition committee will have done a pretty good job of addressing the biggest concerns over interleague play. What it also does, however, is create a situation where I think we will see a loud cry from American League clubs over not being able to use one of the better hitters in crucial situations where the DH in not in use.

Baseball did all it could do here in trying to limit the number of interleague road series toward the end of the season, but there still will be one interleague series taking place on the season’s final weekend. Unless that series in always going to be an NL club visiting an AL club, there will come a time when Boston will face the specter of three game sin St. Louis without either David Ortiz or Adrian Gonzalez in the lineup. There will be a series in late September that forces the Tigers to decide whether a healthy Victor Martinez should play over Prince Fielder or Alex Avila, because all three can’t be in the same lineup.

The new schedule will take the interleague games each team plays from 18 up to 20, meaning that for a full ten games, the 15 American League clubs won’t have the DH at their disposal. Not all of those 15 clubs employ a full-time DH like Boston does, or Detroit, or the White Sox, but the problem remains real. Teams that have built their club around the idea of having a full-time DH as a major run-producer in their lineup aren’t going to enjoy the idea of a full ten games where the rules will prohibit them from playing.

Sooner or later, and I think sooner, a decision will have to be made to either eliminate the designated hitter altogether or to utilize the DH in both leagues. Major League Baseball has been able to operate with two leagues having different rules for the last 40 years, but as interleague play increases (and I’m betting this isn’t our last increase) as a part of the schedule, the time where we can continue to revel in the novelty of seeing AL pitchers hit is drawing to a close.

And if you think that the DH is going anywhere, well, you’re in for an unwelcome truth. The Player’s Union wouldn’t be doing their job if they allowed Baseball to change the rules and eliminate the jobs of the men who serve as designated hitters.

As unwelcome as it was when Selig first introduced the concept, interleague play has not only survived (and flourished, really), but will now see an expanded role; once which I assume will continue to grow.

Just the same, there are a whole league full of fans that are staunchly opposed to the DH rule; those who love seeing their starting pitcher pulled from a close game in the sixth because his spot is due up in the order, who enjoy watching a guy hitting .161 in the eight-hole getting intentionally walked so the pitcher has to bat, who love seeing a sacrifice bunt with a runner on first and one out in the fourth inning. Those fans are the ones who angrily cry out over the injustice of taking “the strategy out of the game.”

When faced with the possibility of watching his idea, interleague play, be removed from the game, Bud Selig doubled-down and forced the Astros to accept a move to the AL, which was the only way to facilitate an expanded interleague schedule. Now that he has it, he’ll have no choice but to appease the Player’s Union and the member AL clubs in order to keep the peace.

Interleague play has gone from a novelty to a full-time part of the schedule beginning next season. It won’t be long until the DH also becomes a part of every club’s reality every single day. It’s the only way a full-time interleague schedule will truly work.

John Parent is the NL Editorial Director for FanSided MLB. He can be reached at john.parent@fansided.com at via twitter @JohnJParent.