As the COVID-19 virus continues to wreck havoc on all aspects of life around the world, its hard to believe that we have had no sports for just three weeks now.
In reality it seems much longer. It seems every day there is some league speculating as to when we get get back to a sense of normalcy and in the case of the NBA and NHL finish the season and have a playoff.
With the two Canadian cities Toronto and Calgary banning all public gatherings until June 30th, it looks as if baseball will have to wait until July 1st at the earliest to even begin to start the season.
According to Matt Speigal of the Score in Chicago, he heard from an anonymous source with MLB that the best case scenario for a start to the season would be July 1st.
Again that is a best case scenario.
There would have to be a second spring training, a three to four week period where players would work on getting into game shape prior to the start of any season.
This would mean that the social distancing guidelines would have to relaxed by at least the first of June to even think of starting the 2020 season on July 1st.
With the season beginning tentatively on July 1st, there would be no All-Star game, and the season would run until October 15th.
Each team would play a 100 game schedule and this is the best case scenario right now for MLB to have any resemblance of a season.
With the shortened season, MLB has said this would not affect service time earned, and all players scheduled to become free agents after the 2020 season would still be qualified to become free agents.
With the late end to the season not, wrapping until mid -October, this could be dicey with teams from northern climates trying to play baseball in the cold of late October and early November.
The playoff plan being talked about is that all teams that qualify for the playoffs would be able to host their wildcard, divisional, and league championship series games at their home park.
The teams that would advance to the World Series would play at a warm weather neutral site. Dodger Stadium is being talked about right now as the stadium that would host the World Series.
Should the Los Angeles Dodgers who many are predicting will not only make it to the the World Series but win it all in 2020, the fall classic would move to Petco Park in San Diego for the best of seven series.
Again this is only a possible plan being talked about. Nothing has been confirmed.
MLB has never canceled an entire season. There have been shortened seasons due to player strikes, 911, etc, but an entire season has never been cancelled.
The later the social distancing requirements go on to combat the Covid-19 virus, the less likely it is that we will have baseball in 2020, and that would be a shame.
