2020 MLB Season: Maybe a 50-games is what baseball needs
Is it a bad thing that the 2020 MLB season could wind up as short as 50 games?
Who in their right mind would want less baseball this year? Well… owners apparently wouldn’t mind, given there’s a very slim chance teams will earn any revenue from fan attendance during the 2020 MLB season, which according to the owners (though still mostly unproven, due to their unwillingness to open their books) makes paying full pro-rated player salaries essentially impossible.
However, regardless of your thoughts on that bit of reasoning, maybe less baseball is in fact… better?
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Though there have been no formal proposals constructed specifically for a 50-game season, last week’s sliding scale model brought forth by MLB, and the 114-game plan that was countered by the Players Union this week has certainly left the two sides in a bit of a stalemate. And according to the March agreement between the league and the union, the league is indeed allowed to mandate a shortened season if it sees fit.
Basically — according to The Athletic‘s Jayson Stark — there’s a certain amount of money available to spend on player salaries, leaving the 2020 season with two potential options: a severely shortened season (perhaps 50-60 games) featuring full pro-rated salaries, or a much less shortened season (82 or 114 games) with additional pay cuts. Obviously MLB and the MLBPA will still need to determine which way they want to go, but here are a few reasons why shorter could be better:
In all honesty, a shortened 2020 MLB season will bring more excitement.
It’s the go-to for critics of MLB: “the season is too long!”. From late-March all the way to the very end of September, the MLB season can sometimes seem like a neverending marathon, just to suddenly end less than a month later following the World Series.
Think of how much more exciting the regular season could be if there were only 50 games. Instead of a drawn-out marathon, for once in our lifetime the MLB season would be like a quarter-mile drag race, forcing teams to go all out from start to finish. Every victory would feel so much more significant, as would ever loss as well.
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Let’s be real, a shortened 2020 MLB season would also be safer.
MLB has been suspended since mid-March, meaning pitchers haven’t faced hitters, and vice versa, in two in a half months; and that’s not even considering the fact that the little bit of time on the field only lasted a few weeks. Instead of trying to compress an 82 or 114-game season into two or three months — if the league wants to avoid a season stretching to Thanksgiving — perhaps it would be wiser to account for the aforementioned time off and allow for an appropriate amount of days off during the season?
Instead of having oversized rosters and another three-week or month-long spring training — that just forces the season to be more rushed altogether — how about providing teams with multiple off-days each week. With a 50-game season, players won’t have to play every day, keeping them much more fresh throughout the year. Less injuries is always better!
A shortened 2020 MLB season will bring upon much more randomness.
Fewer games means less predictability in the standings, which in turn, could possibly result in a rather interesting race down the stretch. No more instantly counting out teams like the Miami Marlins, Kansas City Royals and the Baltimore Orioles (well… maybe not so much the Orioles)… technically every team is just a few winning streaks away from setting themselves up for the postseason.
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Memorial Day has always been declared the appropriate date to start looking at the standings (roughly 50 games in), well in a 50-game season that day would mark the end of the regular season. Imagine all of the teams still in contention in late-May.
If nothing else, let’s at least make the 2020 MLB season fun.
The truth is, the 2020 season is already going to be looked at differently than any other season in MLB history (it may already even qualify for an asterisk), so why not go ahead and make it as exciting as possible, while also ensuring it’s as safe as possible? Also, experts have been telling us for months now that a second-wave of COVID-19 is headed this way come fall, suggesting that any notion of an extended season would be a massive risk.
And it’s not just all about fun and safety either. A 50-game season also guarantees players their full pro-rated salaries for the 2020 season, which only seems fair for both the owners and players, even if you disagree with either side’s position.
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I mean, I’d much rather have a full 162 this year, but that ship has obviously sailed. So if the league and Players Union can’t settle their differences soon, a 50-game season doesn’t appear too awful of a last resort.