Sutter baseball, softball clamoring for one more title run in 2020
Huskies’ schedules stopped amid health concerns over coronavirus
Editor’s Note: The Appeal is working to feature as many area teams as possible following the temporary shutdown of spring sports due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Today: Sutter High baseball and softball speak out about a forced hiatus to help stop the spread of coronavirus.
Both the Sutter High baseball and softball programs are built around competing for section titles each and every season.
The Huskies softball team is the threetime defending Northern Section Division IV section champion; while baseball bounced back to claim the 2019 Division III title with an 8-1 win over Corning.
Softball started out the 2020 campaign 100; baseball 3-2 before everything sports-wise was temporarily shut down due to public health concerns surrounding coronavirus. Sutter’s campus was closed on March 16 and students, athletes and teachers have been working at home ever since.
It’s a difficult situation for everyone, including those in charge of relaying important messages surrounding the pandemic to teenagers.
“For a lot of these guys it is an outlet, they enjoy the game and playing with each other,” said Sutter baseball coach Stewart Peterson. “It’s hard not to have emotions when something like this affects their daily lives including baseball.”
Peterson is hoping that Sutter can get back on the field after school reopens on April 20.
“We’re waiting to see how it develops. Things are changing so fast (with different orders and expectations),” Peterson said. “There’s nothing official (but) we hope to get going again in April.”
Peterson checks in with his players frequently to see how they’re doing with the stay-at-home order.
He also encourages his players to continue working on their skills and academics while sitting at home.
“I told them to do things on your own,” he said. “I feel bad for our guys especially our
in eight domed stadiums and three Southern California stadiums.
“We have it all mapped out,” Boras said. “It’s workable. We’ve done climate studies, and in Southern California, the average temperature in December is 67 degrees, which is better than late March and early April in most cities. We have 11 stadiums we could play postseason games in. I’m gonna get my neutral-site World Series after all.”
Boras has long been a proponent of playing the World Series – or, at least, the first two games of it – at a neutral site to give fans and corporate sponsors months in advance to plan travel to and purchase tickets for games, turning baseball’s signature event into a multiple-day happening like the Super Bowl or All-star game.
Boras represents some of the game’s highest-paid players, having negotiated more than $1 billion in contracts over the offseason for Gerrit Cole, Anthony Rendon, Stephen Strasburg, Hyun-jin Ryu, Nicholas Castellanos, Mike Moustakas and Dallas Keuchel.
The more games played in 2020, the more likely players would be paid their full salaries and accrue a full year toward arbitration, free agency and a full pension.
Questions of salary – would base pay, bonuses and incentives be prorated based on the number of games played? – roster size and the annual draft are among the many issues MLB and the players union are working through during the COVId-19-induced shutdown.
But the schedule is a top priority, and Boras has an app for that. Under his plans, the bulk of the regular season and all of the playoffs would be played, preserving much of the teams’ local television revenues and MLB’S national TV revenues, the overwhelming bulk of which come from postseason broadcasts.
Under the Boras plan, wild-card games would be played Dec. 3, the division series would be Dec. 5-9, the league championship series Dec. 11-17 and the World Series on Dec. 19-26.
There would be no days off in postseason series, and games would be played in Los Angeles, Anaheim, San Diego, Miami, Seattle, Arizona, Milwaukee, Toronto, Houston, St. Petersburg, Fla., and Arlington, Texas.
“All the players I’m talking to want to play all the games, and we can map this out,” Boras said. “We’re just trying to let (MLB) know we have the ability to do it, that there’s a logical way to do it. You have the facilities. You have the sites to do it. The difference is how the playoffs are run and where they’re played.
“I think having a planned World Series at a designated site would be a tremendous economic
gain for our industry. You could secure corporate sponsorships and have entertainment surrounding it. The Super Bowl has one game. Here, we can have five to seven days of festivities.”
There are flaws to Boras’ plan. A regular season encompassing October and November would require some games to be played in nasty weather, but Boras said the schedule could be adjusted to minimize the number of late-season games in coldweather cities.
A July 1 start would require teams to play at least a dozen doubleheaders, but Boras said MLB could reduce the strain by expanding rosters to 30 or so players for doubleheaders, scheduling them in the middle of series and following those series with days off.
A playoff run to Christmas also would force MLB to push back the start of the 2021 season until at least mid-april.