When interleague play started back up around three weeks ago, I posted my argument against interleague here at Hot Foot, and I still feel much the same way. However, a Jayson Stark column at ESPN.com provides an interesting look at interleague play, not only this year but in years past, and how it corresponds to success in October.

What Stark and ESPN found was that teams don’t simply do poorly in interleague play, brush off the dust, and do well against their own league foes. Only about one-fifth of playoff teams in the interleague era have had losing interleague records, Stark said, and almost half of that twenty was just one game under .500 in interleague. Going further, only two World Series winners have had losing interleague marks.

Stark (and a scout Stark talked to) bring up the point that interleague play is the one time all year when every other team in your league can gain ground on you because nobody is playing each other. (Well, except for the two teams that have to play each other because the leagues are unbalanced, but more on that in a moment.)

This logic makes complete sense. This all makes the following good news to Mets fans:

Most significantly, no team made it to October after having as rough a time in interleague play as the 3-8 records the Phillies and Dodgers have. (Worst interleague record ever by a playoff team: 4-11, by the ‘97 Astros, in the first year of interleague play.)

More good news for Mets fans is this is a bad National League, as the American League dominated interleague play again. Just by looking at the National League records fall over the last month, a fan could make such an observation. A few American League teams that had been terrible (like the Tigers and Royals) began to make some headway. Meanwhile, the NL East slowly began to sink to join the NL West in the category of “pitiful.” By the way, as of this writing, the Diamondbacks are at exactly .500 and they hold a 2.5 game stranglehold on the wild, wild West. Man, it wasn’t so long ago that the Diamondbacks were held up as one of the premier teams in the league.

Stark backs me up, however, on Major League Baseball’s commitment to a laughably inconsistent and unequal schedule.

The NL Central was supposed to be matched up against the AL East this year, right? But somehow, the Yankees and Red Sox had just two common opponents (Houston and Cincinnati).

So the Yankees’ other 12 interleague games were against the Pirates, Padres and Mets (currently a combined 20 games under .500), but the Red Sox got stuck with the Phillies, Cardinals, Diamondbacks and Brewers (currently a combined 27 games over .500). And neither of them played the Cubs. Huh? If this AL East race ever tightens, think you’ll hear any decibel-ized howling out of the New England portion of the old fan base?

Now, grant it, there’s no way Major League Baseball could have known these teams would have these records, but at the very least, each AL East team should play a similar schedule. These discrepancies are just way off-base, and if its the Yankees standing atop the East come October, Red Sox fans have a right to complain without being ridiculed as whiners. Something needs to be done.