Friday, May 16, 2008

No interleague for these guys

In what's an annual tradition, two NL Central teams are playing each other this weekend while the rest of the league takes part in interleague play because while 30 is a nice round number of teams to have in your sports league, it doesn't mesh with have super-special interleague play that only happens twice a year. That means that the two leagues have to be different sizes and since the NL Central is the only division with six teams, they're always involved in these non-interleague games. Sometimes it's the Pirates or Reds against someone from another division, but it's almost always the Pirates or Reds. Today the Bucs go to Wrigley for a Friday afternoon game. I can't really think of a worse place for the Pirates to go right now with the hot streak they're on. The Cubs are 17-7 at home this year and the Pirates always seem to play poorly on the north side of Chicago.

Tom Gorzelanny is taking the hill tonight against Sean Gallagher at 2:20 Eastern today. Neither pitcher has been very good this year, but Gallagher hasn't made all that many starts, either. The Pirates have won eight of their last ten, but only made up one game on the Cubs, who've won seven of their last 10. In fact, the Pirates are still tied for next to last in the Central despite their 20-21 record, which just goes to show you that counting on a division to suck for more than a year or two in a row is not bright. These things are cyclic and the Central looks primed for an up year after a couple downers. Or the bottom will fall out on the Pirates, Cardinals, and Astros and the Cubs will run away with the division in July. Either or, really.