MLB cautiously optimistic
Baseball officials considering aggressive approach to 100-game regular season for 2020
Baseball by Canada Day?
Honest to goodness, Major League Baseball being played around North America in the middle of summer?
On so many levels, it sounds like crazy talk and, let’s face it, the logistical hurdles are high and stacked close together before such a concept can be taken seriously, let alone take place.
But according to a Tuesday report in USA Today, MLB officials are said to be at the least cautiously optimistic that a significant 2020 season and playoffs can take place.
The plan, loosely outlined by Bob Nightengale, the newspaper’s respected national baseball columnist, would see play begin in late June or early July and would do so under a significantly revamped format.
For starters, the American and National Leagues would be scrapped for the 2020 season and MLB’S 30 teams would be re-ordered into three, 10-team divisions based on geography. With a start date by the first week of July at the latest, ideally a 100-game season would take place with teams facing only opponents in their division.
According to the report, there are many details still to be worked out and the plan is just one under consideration by officials, but it also would include an expanded playoff format.
The divisions, constructed regionally in the event that travel opened up later in the schedule — think September or October — certainly is an intriguing proposition.
The Jays, for example, would be in an “Eastern” configuration that includes both the New York Yankees and Mets, the Boston Red Sox, World Series-champion Washington Nationals, Philadelphia Phillies, Pittsburgh
Pirates, Baltimore Orioles, Miami Marlins and Tampa Bay Rays.
Naturally, the plan is in the preliminary stages and is contingent on the COVID-19 pandemic being under control and proper testing made available to players, officials and others required to enact the schedule.
There are variations in the proposals being considered by MLB, a league in which officials have had far less to say about the prospects of 2020 than their other major pro league counterparts.
The Blue Jays, like many teams, have had little to say on the record as plans continue to be formed and discussed behind the scenes.
If restrictions ease enough at some point in the schedule, it is suggested that officials would consider having games played in major league stadiums, albeit likely in front of no fans or drastically reduced crowds. Hence the divisions built on geography.
Nightengale said that baseball officials are reluctant to talk in detail about the logistics of such a plan, presumably because there are so many roadblocks that could crop up, the biggest of them being the state of the pandemic.
But with professional baseball already back in action in Asia and more than two months to work out the details, there appears to be considerable optimism that it can happen.
Among the issues to work through would be whether the season would begin in isolation in Arizona, Florida and Texas for an undetermined amount of time. If so, however, it would allow a significant amount of games to be played before teams returned to their home stadiums for the remainder of the schedule — should that become possible.
That said, officials are apparently considering the possibility that, pandemic concerns pending, several thousand fans could be watching games in various stadiums towards the end of the schedule or in the playoffs.
So much of any discussion is premature, but it is apparent that MLB officials and teams have been creative in seeking solutions.
The regional format presumably addresses the concern of many players opposed to playing a complete season away from their families. A hybrid schedule helps address that concern.
Clearly, much has to fall into place with health and government officials providing the green light. The U.S., for example, has cracked the one million mark in confirmed cases and, in the case of the Blue Jays, there is an international border involved.
Any blueprint to resumption for any professional sport is fraught with challenges. But, as is the case with all the major North American pro leagues, there is massive financial incentive for leagues, players and owners to salvage something from 2020.
But a 100-game season and playoffs? Realistic or not, it sure sounds like a field of dreams.