We got our very first taste of Interleague play this past weekend with the Mets taking on the Yankees at CitiField. All in all, the Mets faired well, taking two of three and got some solid pitching performances from starters Hisanori Takahashi, Mike Pelfrey and Johan Santana. They were able to effectively keep much of the potent Yankee lineup in check, which led me to ponder the blessings and curses of Interleague play from the Mets perspective. Let’s face it, when the Mets can take a series from the Yankees, it’s at least cause for Met fans to hold their heads up high and have some pride in their team—at least for a little while. But when things don’t go the Mets’ way, we lament the unfairness of Interleague play, “Why do the Mets always have to play the Yankees two times every season? I don’t see the Phillies having to take on the World Champions as part of their regular season ritual.”

No Interleague is not fair. The schedule and match-ups are unbalanced, although it serves as a great marketing tool for MLB. From that standpoint, it works. Granted, it would be easier for the Mets to move to Toledo, Ohio and take on the Cleveland Indians every year, but that’s not the hand that’s been dealt and if the Mets are to be the talk of the town and grab the back page headlines, they have to take the fight to the baseball diamond where it counts. Fair enough.

But just how tough is the competition the Mets have to face compared to Phillies or other teams in the league? The Cub pitchers, being in the same division as the Cardinals, have to face Albert Pujols on a regular basis. That’s no picnic. Glad the Mets only play the Cardinals 6 times a year. But the Mets have their own problems, because they have to face the likes of Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, Ryan Zimmerman, Hanley Ramirez and long-time Met killer Larry “Chipper” Jones on a pretty regular basis. Choose your poison.

So let’s break this down and take a look at the Mets pitching staff this year and identify not only what batters are hitting off of Met pitchers but also the quality of the hitters they face. First, take a look at this chart and then I’ll go into more detail about the numbers.

The three columns after the pitcher’s name are pretty straight forward. They represent the batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage of opponents against that particular pitcher. We see that Francisco Rodriguez, so far, has been the toughest to get a hit off of with opponents batting average of .193 and Jonathon Niese has been hit pretty hard at .322. John Maine has been more prone to give up extra base hits with an opponent slugging of .506 and once again K-Rod has kept the extra base damage down to a minimum.

The last three columns represent the aggregate batting average (and OBP and SLG) of all of the hitters that pitcher has faced. “Q-AVG” stands for Quality Average which represents the quality of the batters that that particular pitcher has faced.

Let’s give an example. Hypothetically, let’s say that Santana is facing a team where every one of the batters, from top to bottom, is batting exactly .300. This would be a good hitting lineup and the aggregate batting average against this team would be .300. So the Q-AVG would be .300 which represents the difficulty of these hitters that Santana has to pitch to. If Santana were to hold this team to 6 hits after facing 25 batters, his opponent average would be .240. We can then identify that Santana did a really nice job containing this offense to just 6 hits when normally they would have done better since the overall quality of the hitters showed that they were .300 hitters. . But when we are talking about Q-AVG, we are not talking about just one lineup, but rather the collective aggregate averages of all the hitters Santana has faced so far this season.

So what conclusions can we draw from this? Santana, Rodriguez and Takahashi are the three Met pitchers who have faced the highest average of quality hitters. And it appears for all three pitchers that the numbers they have produced are lower than the Q-AVG, Q-OBP, Q-SLG, indicating they have done very well. Pelfrey has faced the lowest quality hitters at .246 and his opponent batting average of .258 suggest that he has not been doing as good of a job keeping them in check. But he has done well in the Q-SLG department keeping extra base hits lower than the slugging average of his collective opponents. John Maine has been mauled in the Q-SLG category and Jonathon Niese has been far too easy to hit in every category compared to the quality of batters he has been up against.

To help put this into context, of all pitchers in the N.L. who have pitched more than 50 innings, Zach Duke of Pittsburgh has faced the highest quality of hitters with a Q-AVG of .265. However, he has not done well as opponents are hitting .309 against him this year. Johan Santana is third on the list with his Q-AVG of .263, behind Jon Garland of the Padres (Q-AVG of .264). So we see what Santana has been able to achieve is very good when you consider the quality of hitters he has had to face.

Conversely, Bronson Arroyo (Q-AVG.234/ AVG.242), Brad Penny (Q-AVG.237/AVG.293) and Josh Johnson (Q-AVG .239/ AVG .201) have faced the lowest quality of hitters in the N.L. Lucky them.

Based upon the chart, we can derive some ideas about how good, poor or just plain lucky some pitchers have been. The data is subjective and can be interpreted a multitude of ways. Perhaps as the season moves along, Santana won’t face quite the quality of hitters he has been facing and therefore his ERA will improve. Perhaps because of his ace status, managers from other teams will continue to roll out their best hitters rather than give them a rest day knowing they will need to generate as many run opportunities against Santana as they can. Or perhaps he’s just gotten some bad luck thrown his way and he has managed to perform better than the collective average of these hitters, which reinforces Santana’s overall excellence.

But one thing we can confirm is that baseball is not always a fair game. Some teams will somehow avert having to face Roy Halladay or Tim Lincecum where other teams will have to face them two, maybe three times before the season is over. Some teams are in a weaker division. Some teams have the DH. Some teams will get a break because their opponent’s best hitter is on the DL or in a slump. And yes, some teams have to face a cross-town rival, with the highest payroll in baseball on a regular basis as their cross to bear through a long season. It’s not always fair but the game is definitely perfectly imperfect (or is that imperfectly perfect?—You decide.)