MLB is still trying to find the perfect plan to bring back baseball in 2020, though at this point time and more testing may be the best course of action.
The news released by USA TODAY’s Bob Nightengale — and later discussed here by Rick Soisson — has started quite the debate among fans this week. For the fourth time, if you’re counting at home, MLB has constructed a plan for the 2020 season, though this time actual return dates have been declared, with baseball potential returning as early as late June and no later than July 2.
Location had been the big concern in the previous three proposals, with the first three plans featuring some kind of hub-style layout in Arizona, Florida, or Texas (or all of them together).
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However, MLB’s most-recent plan is basically built on the idea that all 30 teams would be back in their respective home ballparks (eventually), given the three 10-team divisions are orientated regionally (West, Central, East).
In the event teams aren’t allowed back at their home ballparks (by late June or July 2), due to worsening circumstances regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, or perhaps there’s just simply not enough testing to go around… well, that part appears less clear. Nightengale’s report does go on to include talks of “possibly opening the season in Arizona, Florida or Texas for the first several weeks.”
Either way, it’s certainly a lot to take in, especially when looking at the caveats in play. MLB has always said that any plan to return would require the approval of medical experts and that COVID-19 testing would need to be available to the public. Neither of those requirements exists at the moment, at least not widely for the latter.
On average, the US has been testing around 200,000 people per day, though President Trump vows the country is close to reaching 5 million per day soon (despite a recent report that there’s a shortage for all three of the main types of COVID-19 tests currently available).
However, there are some really good takeaways from the league’s latest attempt to bring the sport back; the best of which is the acceptance that fans most likely won’t be part of the 2020 season (which is probably best at this point). Fans aren’t required for teams to play in their home ballparks (or to play at all), and spreading out the teams — as opposed to keeping all 30 clubs hunkered down in Arizona — obviously helps spread out the burden of what will be required to keep each of the 30 clubs safe.
And while the regional layout of the divisions doesn’t completely eliminate long road trips (for example the Braves will still travel over 1,000 miles to face the Twins, and vice versa), it at least prevents teams from traveling across country on a weekly basis, limiting a lot of the exposure.
The big positive here, though, is that this latest plan can simply be intertwined with the three-state, hub-style proposal if need be. As FanGraphs’ Tony Wolfe shared Thursday morning, the Florida/Texas/Arizona plan offers three different time zones in which to play games, which if incorporated with the regional divisions, results in a fairly reasonable set-up if the pandemic situation prevents teams from starting off the 2020 campaign at their respective homes.
Wolfe goes on to add other cities into the mix, eventually ending up with a 5-state hub, but the point here is that there are numerous ways to start the season if teams are unable to immediately play at their home ballparks, while still maintaining the regional layout in terms of scheduling.
Still, even the most optimistic of us are having a tough time. According to Wolfe’s post above, more than 1,000 people have died every day from the coronavirus since April 2, which makes it tough to really look at sports as a priority right now. The latest plan is a great proposal, and it’s important that MLB continues to strive for a way to bring the sport back this year, but perhaps we still need a little more time.
What do you think?