MLB planning for late July start

There will be no asterisk for the 2020 baseball season because the year itself is an obvious outlier in every way. Whoever wins the World Series — if the season makes it that far — will overcome the challenges of a three-month sprint inside empty ballparks during a pandemic. No other champion, to be sure, will have faced those obstacles.

“The teams that lose, they’ll be the ones going, ‘Well, it’s not for real, they didn’t play 162, they didn’t have the marathon,’ ” Mike Stanton, a former pitcher who played in six World Series said Tuesday. “But for the team that wins, it’ll be just as special as any other — and in some ways even more so, because of the trials and tribulations that everybody has gone through to get to that point.”

“This will be a year that everyone remembers,” Stanton added.

Baseball, of course, will be just a small patch on 2020’s tapestry of the weird. But for a sport with such a deep and enchanting history, it will stand out as a singular phenomenon, by far the shortest season since the 1870s — before the invention of the pitcher’s mound, the catcher’s mitt and the infield fly rule.

Teams will play only 60 games, with opening day likely to be July 24. That is a week before the traditional trading deadline, when also-rans give up on the season and trade veterans to contenders for prospects.

Now, though, every team will reach late July as a contender, with a trade deadline to be determined. Think of it as forced competitive balance, when even the worst teams can dream of getting hot for nine weeks and stealing a playoff berth. Every game will count 2.7 times more than usual, infusing daily urgency to a sport in which teams often have time to coalesce.

After 60 games last season, the Nationals were 27-33 — two games worse at that point than the Pirates. The Nationals surged up the standings and won the World Series. The Pirates spiraled and finished in last place.

Then again, last year’s postseason field didn’t change much after the 60-game mark.

At that point, the playoff teams would have been the Yankees, Twins, Astros, Rays and Rangers in the American League, and Braves, Brewers, Phillies, Cubs and Dodgers in the National League. Seven of those teams wound up in the postseason; only the Rangers, the Phillies and the Cubs faded.

The schedule will be limited to divisional play, plus interleague games with teams in the corresponding geographic division. So the Yankees, for example, will play their American League East rivals Orioles, Red Sox, Rays and Blue Jays, but also the National League East teams: Braves, Marlins, Mets, Phillies and Nationals.

Doing so without fans will be jarring, but perhaps not for long.

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