NL set to end 14-year interleague losing streak

When's the last time you thought about interleague play? This is the 22nd season of interleague play in baseball - interleague made its Major League Baseball debut the same year as Bartolo Colon - and it has become so normalized that unless it's a rivalry game (Mets-Yankees, Cubs-White Sox, Dodgers-Angels, Giants-A's), I doubt you even notice they're happening anymore. This is the sixth season in which we have had an interleague game every single day of the schedule, and all told, I doubt the average fan finds a Twins-Cubs game any stranger than a Marlins-Cubs one. This, suffice it to say, is quite a journey from where we were when interleague play was first introduced. In 1997, Bob Costas called interleague play a "slapdash deal that baseball has thrown together with its usual lack of thought" https://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/15/sports/another-act-in-the-baseball-follies.html . This was the general consensus, interleague play as a gimmick tossed at the wall as a cheap way to draw back fans after the 1994 strike. (Originally, interleague play was going hand-in-hand with the elimination of the designated hitter http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1996-01-17/sports/9601170131_1_interleague-two-team-markets-owners .) But water eventually finds its natural level, and at this point, attendance at interleague games is essentially the same as non-interleague games https://www.theringer.com/2017/6/12/16041046/mlb-20-years-of-interleague-play-4f4bb9e6ec03. It's just the sport right now, and forever. Which means, other than those rivalry series (and then only a few), there's only one particularly noteworthy aspect of interleague play left. And it's a good one. Last year, the American League had a better record than the National League in interleague play, 160 wins to 140. That's a pretty close margin - it's roughly the winning percentage the Brewers had last season - but that's not what's important about it. What matters is simply that the American League won. Again. 2017 was the 14th consecutive season that the American League had a better record than the National League in interleague play. Fourteenth! The first eight seasons of interleague play were a dead split, 4-4. The 13 after that, heading into this year, were all American League victories. It was close in 2013, when the American won 154-146, and a massive blowout in 2006, which the AL won 154-98, which was the American League beating the National League at the pace of a 99-win team. For all the chatter about interleague play, the two leagues have become much more of a piece in the last decade; the umpires are the same, the players are the same, the stadiums are roughly the same, everything's the same but the DH. But still: 14 years in a row! It's a curse! There are various theories as to why this streak might be happening - the DH messing with roster construction, travel time disparities, random chance - but it is worth noting: So far, 43 of the 300 interleague games in ... the National League is in the lead. The NL has won 28 of the first 43 games, a whopping .651 winning percentage that's higher than anything either league has ever put up. The National League is playing against the American League so far the way the Dodgers played against everyone last year. This could finally be the year. Of course, we have said that before. Here is FiveThirtyEight speculating that 2016 could be the NL's breakthrough https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-nl-is-finally-winning-interleague-play-for-now/; here is CBS doing the same last year https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/the-nl-has-a-shot-at-breaking-a-13-season-long-interleague-play-drought-vs-al/ , as late as August. And each time: The AL still came out on top. There are reasons to think this really is the year, though. First off, 28-15 is quite the head start: The NL only needs to go 123-144, a .461 winning percentage (roughly last year's Orioles), to come up with the 151 wins necessary. But more to the point: For the first time in a decade, the National League seems to definitively have better teams than the American League. It's not particularly close. The American League has the defending champions, it has the Yankees and Red Sox, it has Trout and Ohtani. But it also has the Orioles and the AL Central. The Orioles alone could swing this: They are arugably the worst team in baseball right now - and one that will presumably get even worse once it finally trades away the MVP contender in the middle of its lineup - and haven't even played any interleague games yet. And the American League Central, a division that doesn't have a single team with a winning record, has to play the National League Central this year, a division in which the Chicago Cubs are currently fourth. Here's a fun fact: There are more teams with losing records in the American League Central than there are in the entire National League. I swear that this is true. There are only four teams in the National League with losing records: The Padres, the Reds, the Marlins and ... the Dodgers, the defending National League champions. This is where the primary disparity between the leagues lies; the National League teams who have taken a step backward in recent years have taken a step forward this year, and the AL teams haven't. *American League teams who had a losing record in 2017 but have a winning record in 2018: 2 (Mariners, Blue Jays) *National League teams who had a losing record in 2017 but have a winning record in 2018: 5 (Mets, Braves, Phillies, San Giants, Pirates) Even if a couple of those NL teams fall back - I'm looking at you, Giants and Pirates - that's a steep hill for American League to climb. Tellingly, four of the best five team records in the game are all in the American League; only Arizona reaches that level out of the NL. But they're fattening up on bad teams in the AL, and there are a lot of bad teams. The NL will likely fatten up on them in the same way. So yes. It is early. But every indicator - early-season starts, depth of quality teams, pure regression - points to the National League breaking the streak this year. I'll just go out and say it: The NL is coming out on top in 2018. It's finally happening. It almost has to. If it doesn't, jeez, maybe there is some sort of curse.