Steve Webb
LOS ANGELES — This first month of the baseball season, a lot of ink has been spilled (remember ink? Ask your grandpa) over the strength of the NL West. Still, as I write this on Aprill 14, something’s off. What? NOBODY HAS PLAYED ANYBODY YET!! The Dodgers haven’t played the division-leading Padres (first series isn’t til June), the resurgent Giants (June again), or the 2023 pennant-winning Diamondbacks (May for that one). In fact, believe or not, this week’s series with the Rockies in the first NL West match-up for the Boys in Blue this year. That don’t sit right.
There was a time when the National League West wasn’t just a division — it was a gauntlet. Dodgers vs. Giants was never just “one of the matchups on the calendar.” It was war. Padres-Dodgers games were appointment viewing, especially after San Diego stacked their roster with stars to try and topple the Dodgers’ throne. Even Arizona, with its scrappy young core, became a threat not to be taken lightly. These weren’t just games — they were battles for bragging rights, playoff position, and territorial dominance in the Wild West of baseball.
But now? MLB’s new “balanced schedule” is starting to feel more like a betrayal than a benefit. In the name of parity and fairness, baseball has traded away some of its most thrilling regional rivalries — and as a fan of the Dodgers, I’m not buying it.
Starting in 2023, every team in Major League Baseball began playing every other team at least once, cutting back on the number of divisional games from 76 to just 52. That means instead of facing the Giants or Padres 19 times a season, we only get them 13 times. On paper, that sounds fine — maybe even exciting, especially if you’re a fan of seeing new ballparks or watching your team face stars from the other league more often. But the cost? It’s huge. The kind of fierce, emotionally charged divisional battles that used to define a season are now scattered and diluted.
You can’t tell me that a Tuesday night in August against the Royals is going to stir the same emotions as a weekend set at Oracle Park or Petco, with the division on the line and tension in every pitch. You can’t convince me that a mid-May visit to Comerica Park is worth more than a critical series in Phoenix, where the D-backs are clawing at the Dodgers’ heels in the standings. These games simply don’t carry the same weight.
What made divisional play so compelling — particularly in the NL West — was how much familiarity bred contempt. When you face the same hitters over and over, pitchers adjust. When you see the same arms multiple times a month, batters adapt. Managers learn each other’s tells. Bench-clearing dustups aren’t out of the question. These are the ingredients that make for a real rivalry, and MLB is watering it down for the sake of “balance.”
Dodgers fans have been treated to some of the best division drama in recent memory. Remember the 2021 season, when both the Dodgers and Giants won over 105 games, battling to the final day for the division crown? That year, the Dodgers finished 106-56 and still had to settle for a Wild Card Game. That’s how intense — and high-stakes — the NL West used to be.
Would that kind of showdown even be possible under this new schedule? With fewer head-to-head matchups between contenders, it’s harder for a trailing team to make up ground directly against the teams they’re chasing. Instead, everyone ends up scoreboard watching and hoping someone else does the dirty work. That’s not exciting — that’s passive.
And it’s not just about the standings. It’s about the fans. The Dodgers-Giants rivalry is one of the oldest and fiercest in all of sports, not just baseball. Padres fans have spent the past few years building a real, bitter rivalry with Los Angeles, and even D-backs supporters — coming off a 2023 NL pennant — are itching to prove last year wasn’t a fluke. But how can these tensions simmer and explode when the teams aren’t playing each other enough to let the emotions boil?
What made those old Dodgers-Giants games so unforgettable wasn’t just the stakes — it was the repetition. The constant battles. The grudges that built over a season. Now, we’re lucky if we get a Giants-Dodgers series that matters in both April and September. That’s a loss for everyone.
Yes, MLB is trying to create a more national game. Yes, they want every fan to see every star, and that’s noble. But baseball has always been built on regional rivalries, on division races, on the kind of intensity that comes from familiarity. The new schedule chips away at that foundation. It takes away the blood and sweat of a true divisional dogfight and replaces it with a glossy, sanitized rotation of opponents that lacks real meaning.
We don’t need balance. We need bad blood. We need rivalry. We need a true NL West slugfest. Bring back the 19-game divisional grind. Let the Dodgers, Giants, Padres, and D-backs go to war again.
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That’s what the fans — and the game — deserve.
