MLB Interleague Handicapping Preview

The first installment of the Interleague portion of the 2008 season gets underway on Friday, May 16th. There are some interesting things to note about handicapping interleague baseball action as it is indeed a different animal. One of the key areas that I focus in on when analyzing interleague baseball match-ups is the familiarity of a team with a pitcher. In today's modern era of free agency and frequent player movement, you will often find certain match-ups that favor the hitters or the pitchers to a much stronger extent than you would normally see in traditional intra-league match-ups within the American League and within the National League. The key here is that a pitchers success, or lack thereof, can often be tied back to a team's familiarity with him. This is why we often see pitchers go through 'sophomore slumps' because they enjoy great success in their rookie campaigns when nobody has seen much of them and they then struggle in their second season when the hitters know what's coming! This same 'principle' is what works for us in the case of interleague play as well.

If a pitcher is in good current form but they're now pitching in the American League after many years in the National League, they could struggle in interleague action. This is because that pitcher is now likely to be facing lineups dominated with hitters who have seen plenty of him in the past and/or the pitcher is now making his start in a ball park where he's pitched many times in the past but struggled. These are the keys to look for as some pitchers struggle in certain ballparks or against certain lineups and, yet where interleague action might normally be an escape from those issues, it's not for a pitcher whose spent much of his career in the other league. The key is to look at pitchers on a case by case basis and take note of who's had success where versus whose struggled where and just note that interleague handicapping can reveal some surprising stories in that area.

Often a key area of value in interleague handicapping is a starting pitcher facing a lineup filled with hitters who are seeing him for the first time. If a starting pitcher is in good current form, has a vast array of pitches, and has had good movement on his ball, he's going to give a "first look" lineup a lot of trouble! There are also cases where you can grab "ugly dogs" in interleague action because a pitcher who has somewhat subpar numbers can actually come out and dominate a lineup of hitters that have never seen him before. Looking for dogs in interleague action can prove quite fruitful this way because the public will only see the black and white numbers while the way the match-up plays out on the field often has a lot to do with the comfort level of hitters at the plate. This "comfort level" can be disrupted when facing a hurler whom a hitter has never seen before.

One final note about interleague baseball action is something that could prove especially significant here in the first weekend of 2008 IL action. It is often tough for AL teams to go to NL parks because they can't use the DH. While the reverse is also true that factor is not so pronounced because the NL at least gets to add a better stick to their lineup when they go to an AL park. When it's an AL team going to an NL park and having to send a pitcher to the plate with very little hitting experience, it can be a big hurt for the AL teams. Making this particularly significant this year is that the NL actually has a higher ERA than the AL so far this season and plus the overall runs per game has been higher in the NL than in the AL this season. Of course this is quite unusual and, if hitters rule in these IL match-ups, than it could indeed be the NL winning most of these series. As always, it's best to evaluate each series and each game as a match-up separate from the others. However, just keep in mind that the NL sticks could help them to a bit of a more pronounced edge in many of these match-ups in this first weekend. Good luck - Nick Parsons