Watching a Red Sox game at Toronto's Skydome, seeing Rafael Palmeiro of the Baltimore Orioles bat against Pedro Martinez or even the Yankees visiting Fenway Park won't be as exciting when it's the 19th time you've seen it this season, not counting the preseason and playoffs.
This unbalanced schedule, introduced in 2001, made it so that teams play the other teams in their division 19 times during the course of the regular season. This also means that with the on going interleague play, teams don't play other teams in their respective leagues nearly as often.
The idea behind the unbalanced schedule was to strengthen rivalries within each division. As if the Red Sox and Yankees fans needed something to strengthen their ongoing feud. It seems that playing the same team 19 times within one season is so redundant for fans, they are tired of seeing their division foes and yearn to play other teams. For instance, last year, the Red Sox played the Oakland A's all of six times, with not one game coming before the middle of August. By that time they had played the Yankees 12 times. This year, the Red Sox do not play anyone outside of the AL East until April 30. One who watches the Red Sox on a daily basis, should become quite familiar with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays lineup rather soon.
It also seems that the main goal of reinforcing rivalries has not been achieved. Outside of the Red Sox and Yankees' battles, the San Francisco Giants and Los Angeles Dodgers rivalry, the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals and New York Mets and Atlanta Braves, other rivalries have not grown noticably stronger since 2001. If anything, should these teams meet in the playoffs, it can take something away from the intensity of their rivalries. Fans would be able to appreciate seeing their archrivals play against their favorite teams more if there were only 12 as opposed to 19 games.
From the perspective of a Red Sox fan, it would be a lot more interesting if we could see players on the West Coast such as Vladimir Guerrero, Ichiro Suzuki and Eric Chavez play more against the Red Sox. It is hard to watch them play on national television, due to the fact that they are not on TV much, and their games usually go into the early hours of the morning. It would help fans on the East Coast appreciate the other world of baseball outside of their beloved high-payroll franchises.
My final thoughts on this subject are that I don't see how the Red Sox, or really any other team in the American League East, will ever have a rivalry with The Tampa Bay Devil Rays. It does not matter if a team plays The Devil Rays 19 or 119 times in a season, if the Devil Rays perpetually finish in last place, then there simply cannot be a rivalry. If anything, because the Devil Rays play so many games against the tough AL East opponents, their chances of finishing with a winning record and becoming a feared opponent are even slimmer.
It is even more unfair when one thinks about how much easier it is for the Minnesota Twins to win the AL Central than for the Red Sox or Yankees to win the AL East. While the Red Sox and Yankees constantly face each other as well as other strong teams, the Twins, instead, have the privilege of playing mediocre teams such as the Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Indians.
Overall, although baseball has other problems aside from this issue of the unbalanced schedule, it is something that should be considered for the future, as Red Sox Nation can only watch the Devil Rays so much.