Looking At The Yankees' Interleague Schedule (Updated)

The Yankees kick off their 20-game interleague schedule tonight when the Arizona Diamondbacks come to town.  It'll be New York's first series under the new interleague scheduling setup that MLB implemented this season, and to be perfectly honest, I hadn't given much thought to the team's interleague schedule and how it can work for or against them this season.  Every team is going to be impacted differently with the way MLB set this up, so now's as good a time as any to take a quick look at how things stack up for the Bombers and educate yourself if you're like me.

As far as the games go, they break down like this:

- 4/16-4/18: vs. Arizona
- 5/7-5/9: @ Colorado
- 5/27-5/28: @ the Mets
- 5/29-5/30: vs. the Mets
- 6/18-6/19: vs. LA Dodgers
- 7/30-7/31: @ LA Dodgers
- 8/2-8/4: @ San Diego
- 9/20-9/22: vs. San Francisco**

Strictly from a "that's pretty damn cool" perspective, I'm a big fan of the 2 home/2 away 4-game Subway Series in the last week of May.  With the changes made to make interleague play a year-long thing, the Yanks and Mets lose a couple of games this year, so putting them all together makes that series a much bigger event and I'm sure the atmosphere at both parks will be great.  Hopefully ESPN is able to wiggle their way into getting national broadcast rights for those games because I'd love to watch them.

Looking at the rest of the schedule from a strictly baseball perspective, it does seem like the Yankees got the short end of the new interleague scheduling stick.  Outside of the Mets, they play the rest of their 16 games against the NL West. with only 5 of those games (including the series starting tonight) coming at home.  Between the additional trips out west to play the other 11 games and the loss of the DH that comes with it, The Yanks will be at a disadvantage for most of those games without the DH, especially with the D-backs, Dodgers, and Giants all boasting strong pitching staffs.  One small benefit the Yanks will get is a scheduled day of rest before five of the six series against the NL West, which should make the travel a little less of a hassle.  The only true sucky travel series will be the final one against the Giants, when the Yanks will have to play a night game in Toronto and then fly cross-country to play a game the next night in San Fran.

** (As reader Hawkeye pointed out, the San Fran series is at YS3, which balances out the schedule and makes that lack of a travel day not that big a deal.  That whole "@/vs." thing can be a real bitch when you're looking back and forth at a scheduling page 50 times.  Either that or I'm an idiot.)

This D-back series will serve as a dress rehearsal of sorts for the remainder of the interleague schedule.  The Yanks will be at home, they'll have the use of the DH, and they'll have the opportunity to continue to tinker with their "vs. LHP" lineup.  As with any other series, if they can come away with 2-1 wins or splits in their interleague matchups, they should be just fine.