MLB may have a road map for season
What might a 2020 season look like? Events in Asia, Australia may provide insight into what lies ahead
Baseball will be played in 2020. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred seems to have zeroed in on that mantra as a certainty.
How and when a baseball season might be played remains entirely uncertain. Though, bits, pieces and multi-city variances of an “Arizona plan” — where all 30 teams are sequestered in Phoenix area hotels to play a shortened season, tested constantly, and instructed to cut off physical contact with others — seems to be a logical starting point despite the plethora of logistic drawbacks.
Baseball leagues such as the Chinese Professional Baseball League and Korean Baseball Organization have implemented or are locking in plans to follow that general guideline in order to start their seasons. Other global sports leagues such as the Australia’s National Rugby League, La Liga, Serie A and English Premier League are on similar paths, too.
The Arizona plan’s logistical concerns were enough to get typically-reticent Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim MVP Mike Trout to personally raise red flags. His wife is pregnant, would he be able to witness the birth of his child and be with his wife during a quarantined season in Arizona? The sacrifices might be too much for the MLB player’s association to overcome — and any plan will need to go through the players.
The way other leagues around the world are starting to play ball tell us that time, though unsettling and boring, might lift some of those sacrifices. So, here’s a breakdown of what other leagues are doing to get sports up and running again.
Korean Baseball Organization — South Korea
The 10-team league will start its regular season today. These games will be broadcast in English on ESPN six days a week.
“Obviously I’m pretty pumped for the season to start. I’ve been inundated with baseball work lately, and I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Sung-min Kim, who works in the R&D department for the KBO’s Lotte Giants, said in a message. “Because of the course of actions that the league has taken, they’ve earned my trust on how to go about it during this pandemic and I think, depending on a situation that may arise, we’ll all take pretty solid collective precautionary measures to ensure that everyone stays as safe as possible.”
The coronavirus-limited season will have a similar rollout and look to the CPBL system in place, with a few differences.
Like the CPBL, the KBO’s stadiums won’t be hosting fans until health officials deem crowds safe.
But, the Korean league’s regular season is much longer. Significantly dipped COVID-19 cases allowed the league a chance to squeeze all 144 regular season games in with a shortened postseason and a canceled All-Star game. There are three total postseason rounds and a wild card series, and the first round will be shortened from a best-of-five to a bestof-three series.
Though a handful of teams are concentrated within the Seoul region, half the league is scattered throughout the country. The Lotte Giants in Busan, for example, are a 4.5 hour bus away from the Munhak Baseball Stadium, the SK Wyverns’ home. That’s one of the longer distances any team must travel.
Loosened social-distancing guidelines in South Korea (the country never went on lockdown) have allowed the road trip cadence to go essentially unchanged from a typical season. Teams will ride together in buses and stay at team hotels for away series. Though, players will be told not to wander the streets, eat out or interact with fans in any event.
“They know how important it is not only for the team, but also for the league, to keep themselves out of the risk as much as possible,” Kim said.
The other guidelines to play, as reported by Korea’s Yohap News Agency: Spitting is strictly prohibited and bare-handed high fives are discouraged. Players will have their temperatures checked twice before a game, must fill out a health questionnaire on a specifically designed online application and are encouraged to wear masks any time they are off the field.
Chinese Professional Baseball League — Taiwan
Yes, there is baseball being played somewhere. If you’re sick of the old ESPN or MLB TV replays and yearning to watch some live home runs, you can watch the Taiwanese league’s games (albeit, early in the morning, American time) live on Twitter, now with English commentary. The 11 games that have been broadcast so far have been viewed nearly nine million times.
The CPBL teams have been playing games since April 12, exactly a month and one day delayed from its originally scheduled opening day.
What’s gotten the CPBL up and running while most of the world remains locked inside? A five-team league, plus a federal government that’s been praised for its pandemic preparedness certainly helps.
The players are not kept to a single city hub, or inside of a biospheric bubble — which is a crucial element to some of the earliest proposed plans in the MLB. Players, therefore, can live at home and interact with family. But they’re subject to constant temperature checks and are prohibited from riding public transportation and eating out at restaurants. They are not required to be tested routinely, but one corona virus positive test would shut the season back down.
Cardboard cutouts, drumplaying robots and actual-human cheerleaders occupy corners of the fan-less stands — so the competitive edge of an invested crowd is lacking entirely. The teams are limited to a 60-game season and play in five different stadiums on the island. Just a three-hour drive is the longest distance between two of the home stadiums (Xinzhuang Baseball Stadium and Tainan Municipal Baseball Stadium are 306 kilometers apart). The Los Angeles Times reports that the CPBL is hoping to allow up to 150 fans into the stands by June.
National Rugby League — Australia
Different sport, sure, but Australia’s re-implementation of its National Rugby League can provide baseball some framework, too. Though measures aren’t set in stone, the league looks to be enacting a quasi-biosphere with a central hub.
The MLB’s reliance on constant, long-distance travel combined with the pandemic’s travel restrictions create one of the biggest logistical conflicts. The KBO and CPBT benefit from playing in smaller leagues in relatively small countries, so travel doesn’t present as tall a hurdle.
The National Rugby League in Australia is spread across three different states with possible plans to centralize its season in Sydney, where games will be played at two stadiums — the ANZ Stadium and Bankwest Stadiums. An NRL season’s cadence is similar to a National Football League season; each of the 16 teams plays once a week, which helps mitigate travel logistics.
Nine of the 16 teams play in Sydney, and the teams in Newcastle and Canberra are close enough to Sydney that a drive from players’ homes is doable. But border restrictions may cause some trouble for the four Australian teams located outside of New South Wales (where Sydney is located). If nearby states Queensland and Melbourne can ease travel restrictions, there’s a chance teams may not need to gather under a bubble in Sydney.
Before any plans can be set, the NRL released a 48page health and safety protocol that Australian federal government’s health detection committee will need to sign off on. The NRL’s New Zealand Warriors received a travel exemption to leave the country, but the all-clear to stay in Australia won’t clear until the safety protocol is agreed upon.