When the Astros join the American League in 2013, the reported consensus is that the MLB schedule will shift so that each team plays 30 interleague games 72 division games (18 vs. each team) and 60 games against the other teams in the league (six each against the other 10 teams).
This seems to make pretty good sense, but it also has some folks a little upset about the added interleague games. As it stands now, there are 18 interleague games -- one-ninth of the schedule or about 11 percent. This is quite a bit different than other major U.S. sports leagues. But the additional games will bring things pretty much in line with most of the other leagues.

*An NFL team's schedule includes four games against opponents from another conference (all against the same division, of course), meaning 25 percent of a schedule is cross-conference.
*The NBA has 30 of 82 games against cross-conference foes, which is a pretty high number relatively speaking (about 36 percent).
*The NHL plays 18 of 82 games across conference lines -- about 22 percent.

So if baseball shifts to 30 of 162, it will still be the smallest number of games as a percentage of all four leagues (18.5 percent). The biggest problem with baseball, of course, is that both leagues use a different set of rules. That's not the case in the NFL (except that the AFC allows a team to play without throwing the ball) or the NHL (except the East allows a games where players just sit with the puck for minutes on end) or the NBA (except the East allows the hoarding of talented, ego-driven players on one team, only to see them derailed on the biggest stage).

Adding 12 more DH/non-DH games isn't ideal, but we will say this: if you're an NL team and you don't have a bench player who can be a DH for a handful of games, you have bigger problems than interleague play. And if you're an AL player who positively can't play in the field, then eventually you're going to have a huge problem if you reach the World Series. We would go on a big "Abolish the DH" rant right now, but we won't.

Instead, we'll just say 30 inteleague games seems reasonable. Anything that enables us to use that picture of A.J. Pierzynski getting punched can't be that bad.

The second wild card? Don't get us started ...