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03/29/2007 1:45 PM ET
Exciting matchups a coincidence
MLB schedule creates thrilling scenarios all season long
By Jack O'Connell / MLB.com
Cardinals starter Adam Wainwright is slated to open the 2007 season against the Mets on Sunday. (AP)
It often seems as if the Major League Baseball schedule is designed to create scenarios based on the previous year's turn of events or offseason maneuvers. Nothing could be further from the truth. After all, Katy Feeney, senior vice president for MLB scheduling and club relations, and her crew are already working on the 2008 schedule without a single pitch yet to be thrown in 2007.
"People see some of the matchups and assume we set them up on purpose," Feeney said. "I'd like to say that we knew these things, but we really didn't."
There was no way for the schedulers to realize, for example, that Bruce Bochy would leave the Padres to become manager of the Giants so as to have San Diego and San Francisco play each other in the season-opening series. Nor could it have been foreseen that the first game played in 2007 would feature the clubs that played for the National League pennant last October.
The Mets and the Cardinals get the season started at 8:05 p.m. ET on Sunday at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. The Cardinals' Adam Wainwright, who struck out Mets center fielder Carlos Beltran with the bases loaded in the ninth inning of Game 7 at New York's Shea Stadium to clinch the flag for St. Louis, won't be working out of the bullpen this time but as part of manager Tony La Russa's new rotation.
American League defending champion Detroit opens at home against Toronto on Monday -- one of 13 season openers that day. The last of the first games will be Tuesday when the Padres and the Giants square off at San Francisco's AT&T Park, which will also be the site of this year's All-Star Game on July 10. Bochy's first game with the Giants also marks the beginning of left fielder Barry Bonds' pursuit of Hank Aaron's career home-run record.
After St. Louis, the Mets move on to Atlanta before coming home to face Philadelphia, so there is no letup early in the schedule for New York as the Mets immediately face the two clubs destined to challenge them in the NL East. Among the first series of the season is one between the Cubs and the Reds at Great American Ballpark as new Chicago manager Lou Piniella returns to Cincinnati, where he won a World Series with the Reds in 1990.
The April 15 game between San Diego and Los Angeles at Dodger Stadium will mark the national celebration of Jackie Robinson Day to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the late Hall of Famer breaking baseball's color barrier.
A major change in this year's schedule is intended to help loosen some of the restraints caused by Interleague Play, travel concerns, time changes based on television programming and the unevenness among the league's divisions.
The four-team AL West will continue to have clubs play each division opponent 19 times, but the five-team AL East and Central and NL East and West clubs will be paired against division foes 18 times. In the six-team NL Central, four clubs will play 18 games against one team, 16 against one team and 15 against three teams and two clubs will play 18 games against one team, 16 against two and 15 against two.
"There are some competitive imbalances," Feeney said, "but that cannot be helped. You have the situations of the 'natural rivalries' in Interleague Play, where there are two sets of series instead of one, and the necessity of two NL clubs playing each other during those periods because there are two more teams than in the AL. We have to be mindful of the rule against scheduling teams for more than 20 consecutive [days] and East-West travel. In recent years, the schedule had been so tight. We tried to create some flexibility."
Clubs in five-team divisions will play three-game series nearly exclusively throughout the season. The Interleague rotation this season pairs AL East against NL West, AL Central against NL East and AL West against NL Central.
Some interesting matchups come out of this alignment, beginning with the first round of Interleague Play on May 18 that pits the Cardinals against the Tigers, a rematch of last year's World Series at Detroit's Comerica Park.
Several other former World Series opponents pair off during June Interleague Play: the Phillies-Royals (1980) in Kansas City, the Astros-White Sox (2006) in Chicago, the Pirates-Yankees (1960) in New York and the Braves-Indians (1995) in Cleveland. The Red Sox-Diamondbacks series in Phoenix offers the chance of a duel between Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson, co-Most Valuable Player winners of the 2001 World Series. The Mariners will travel to Wrigley Field and find Piniella in the home dugout.
Other Interleague series have La Russa returning to Oakland with the Cardinals; the Rangers' Sammy Sosa facing the Cubs in Texas; the Reds' Ken Griffey Jr. going back to Seattle; former Met Billy Beane, general manager of the Athletics, and Ron Gardenhire, manager of the Twins, revisiting Shea Stadium and the Washington Nationals going back to their Canadian roots with a trip to Toronto, plus a visit to Minnesota to play the franchise that prior to 1961 was known as the Washington Senators.
All of this, purely by coincidence.
Jack O'Connell is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
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