What you need to know about 60-game season
Baseball is back. Three glorious words.
After months of unsuccessful negotiating with the players’ association, MLB has imposed a 2020 season and the two sides have agreed on health and safety protocols.
The new season will not, however, include a few of the rule changes you may have recently read about.
Here are all the details you need to know about baseball’s shortened upcoming season.
When does the MLB regular season start?
Opening Day will be July 23, with two games taking place — Yankees vs. Nationals and Giants vs. Dodgers. The Phillies will begin play on July 24. MLB will attempt to cram 60 games into about 66 days. Players reported to camp on July 1 for Spring Training II.
How many games?
It will be a 60-game regular season. The league had proposed as few as 50 games and the players’ association had proposed as many as 114. In the end, 60 was the number the league chose when it unilaterally implemented the 2020 season.
Given MLB’s new coronavirus cases, the league’s desire to play the postseason in October, and the length these negotiations took, a regular season much longer than 60 games was no longer feasible. But the players still rejected the league’s 60-game proposal for a few important reasons. Read more
It began and suddenly halted four months ago in spring training and then restarted as summer camp. Now, filled with trepidation the time has come.
It’s the 2020 Major League Baseball season.
It finally has arrived, 119 days later than originally scheduled, and will be the first major team sport to return to the world beginning at 7:08 p.m. ET Thursday with the defending World Series champion Washington Nationals playing the New York Yankees in the nation’s capital.
There will be no fans in attendance. Only cardboard cut-outs. Pumped-in fake crowd noise required by every team. No smell of hot dogs. Virtual advertising everywhere you look. Players sitting in the stands and makeshift dugouts, socially distancing, six feet apart. And there will be displays of social messaging too, with players permitted to wear “Black Lives Matter” or “United for Change’’ patches on their uniforms, with “Black Lives Matter” stenciled on the pitcher’s mounds during the opening weekend of games. Read more
M.L.B. Proposes an 82-Game Season Starting in July
The Korean Baseball Organization is back from the coronavirus shutdown. Is this what MLB games will look like? In South Korea and Taiwan, where its league also recently resumed the season, stadiums are empty except for players, staff, umpires and some media members. Base coaches and umpires must wear masks and latex gloves on the field, and the teams’ training staffs wear masks in the dugouts. Read more
Major League Baseball has formalized its plan to return to the field, with teams agreeing Monday on a proposal to send to the players’ union for an 82-game season that would start without fans in early July. The plan would include an expanded playoff field and the designated hitter for all games, even those in the National League, where it is not typically used.
The plan must clear major obstacles to become reality. Even if the union accepts the structure of a truncated season, the sides would also have to agree on a salary structure for players. The league would also need to have enough tests for players and employees without depleting the public supply, and agree with the union on working conditions, including protocols in case of positive tests.
Details of the proposal were confirmed by multiple baseball officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan cannot be official until authorized by the union. The league’s proposal would authorize the shortest season since the early years of the National League in the late 1870s. To minimize travel, teams would play only against divisional rivals as well as teams in the corresponding geographic division of the opposite league. The proposal, which would require approval from the players’ union, would have teams start the season in early July and mainly play teams in their geographic region. Read more
“Needs to get approval by the Players’ Association, the Mets and every other team in the National League East should anticipate…” Read more
MLB Reportedly Considering Playing in Empty Stadiums During Coronavirus Pandemic. Major League Baseball is reportedly considering starting the 2020 season with games at spring training sites in either Florida or Arizona without fans in attendance because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reported Friday the chances of playing games at home parks this summer with a crowd are becoming “increasingly remote,” leading the league to consider alternatives. However, trying to station all 30 clubs in one area would be “extremely complex and potentially controversial” amid COVID-19. There are numerous hurdles MLB would need to jump before making the plan reality. Read more
“The owners of the 30 MLB teams held a virtual meeting Monday and agreed to a proposal for the restart of the 2020 season. Commissioner Rob Manfred is presenting that proposal to the players Tuesday. That’s the good news. The bad news is this: It’s a long journey from proposal to playing, largely because so many things that have to happen are out of MLB’s hands…” Read more
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