A modern baseball tradition

Interleague play kicked off yesterday in the majors. Now its a very small sample size, but look at what the first day scores are:

Chicago Cubs 6
Chicago White Sox 5

Philadelphia 5
Toronto 3

Florida 8
Tampa Bay 4

Cleveland 9
Cincinnati 4

Detroit 14
St. Louis 4

NY Yankees 2
NY Mets 3

Oakland 15
San Fransisco 3

Kansas City 5
Colorado 2

Minnesota 8
Milwaukee 1

Texas 7
Houston 4

LA Angels 9
LA Dodgers 1

Baltimore 5
Washington 4

San Diego 8
Seattle 1

(Atlanta-Boston postponed, Arizona-Pittsburgh is the NL-NL matchup)

With a couple of perhaps noteworthy exceptions, yet again the American League came out on top. So far in interleague play the AL has a winning percentage of 0.615 (the NL's record I leave as an exercise for some of my slower readers).

Compare this with last year: the AL finished off the season with a 0.611 record in interleague play. Domination was the order of the day. You can also take a peek at some of the matchups from yesterday. The Brewers, one of the hottest teams in the majors went into the game with a 26-15 record, only to be smoked by the Minnesota Twins, who were languishing in the AL-Central with an 18-22 record. Oakland had a respectable .500 record, and so did San Fran, but Oakland didn't for a second look to be in danger when the two teams met. Colorado is a much improved team from previous years, even though their 17-24 doesn't really reflect this. It doesn't matter, KC's 15-27 record overcame them (with dynamite performances from guys I'd never heard of, like Shane Costa and Jeff Baker...I need to get back to watching obscure games again).

There were some surprises the other way: however bad you thought Florida was, Tampa Bay was even worse. Meanwhile, who knew that San Diego was this good Seattle was this bad?