When thinking about interleague play, it’s best to think as a baseball commissioner, someone who (hopefully) has no interest in one team’s success over another’s. This commissioner would only want what’s best for the game.

With 162 games in its season, baseball has the opportunity some other sports (namely, football) don’t really have — a chance to construct the most balanced and equal schedule possible. Yet with interleague play and a ton of divisional play, this balance is not struck whatsoever.

Again, don’t think simply about how this affects the Mets because it affects all of baseball’s teams, varying from year to year as different teams become successes and failures.

With interleague play, teams toggle between playing the AL East, AL Central, and AL West. Invariably, they won’t play the whole division. Even with the four-team AL West this year, the Mets somehow don’t play all four teams because of the Subway Series and their extra series at Colorado. This is particularly impossible for AL teams playing the 6-team NL Central. So the pro-interleague argument that “every city sees every team once every three years” is nothing but a laughable myth.

With the natural rivalries (such as the Subway Series, Freeway Series, etc.), the schedule is even more skewed, since some teams play 6 games against perennial winners (Angels), while others take on perennial losers (Royals). I’ve actually become slightly fond of the natural rivalries because they are the only interleague match-ups that actually build excitement.

But in order to make the natural rivalries work, schedule-wise, each team has to be assigned a natural rival. For some teams, baseball has completely forgotten about natural rivalries. The Red Sox changed back and forth from playing the Braves to the Phillies and this year, they don’t have a natural rival at all. Their entire interleague schedule is the Brewers, Reds, Phillies, Cardinals, Diamondbacks, and Astros. The team is sort of playing the NL Central, I guess?

The Red Sox interleague schedule this season is about as illogical as the Mets’ 2007 interleague schedule, when baseball decided to pit the team up against last year’s AL playoff teams. Every other team in the NL East kept rotating divisions.

This might be just how the schedule shakes out with one to two teams per division having to play an oddball interleague schedule. But in 2006, every team in the NL East played every team in the AL East, except the Mets. The Mets only missed playing the Rays that year. That’s pretty good execution of the established formula.

But this execution doesn’t work out enough to make the scheduling a success. If every team in the NL played every team in the AL once every three years, one might argue it is a mostly fair system. But since there are 16 NL teams and 14 AL teams, this cannot be so, due to the extra NL series to balance out the schedule. The result is the 2005 Braves and 2005 Phillies adding an extra series against Baltimore to make the math work.

Not to make excuses for the NL, but the AL gains a distinct advantage in hitting in these interleague games. The average designated hitter is obviously more talented than the average key utility player. At the same time, the AL also gains an advantage in the pitching department because the AL pitchers face weaker NL lineups by design.

For these reasons, interleague play should be kept to a minimum. Sure, the schedule sometimes stumbles upon the Cubs at Yankees match-up, but these moneymakers don’t happen enough to warrant so much interleague play. In a perfect world, only the natural rivalries would survive because those are the ones that are garner the most fan interest and the most money. When Mets fans think of interleague, they think of Yankees games.

Having only six interleague games would still not balance the schedule, especially since quality of opponent would become even more important in those series. However, with only six interleague games, the effect of the imbalance would be minimized. The chance for a more equal schedule than the current one would exist.