After a long three months of back and forth proposals, frustration and failed negotiations, MLB put forth a 60-game schedule that is set to begin on July 23 or 24 and end on September 27. The last hurdle was the league and union coming to an agreement on safety and health issues related to the covid-19 pandemic.
The lack of the two sides coming to an agreement prior to this time forced the league to implement a schedule, which includes a fully prorated salary. On Monday MLB told the Players Association the schedule would be implemented with their agreement to return to their respective training facilities on July 1. In addition, they had to agree to codify to a length safety protocol manual.
Although agreement to play this season, albeit quite abbreviated, the ultimate success may be to see if the league can prevent spread of the coronavirus. Everything is addressed in the safety protocol, and it will be interesting to see if the difficult daily task to prevent the spread is achievable.
How will a 60-game schedule look? Quite a bit different that anyone is accustomed to and some wonder if the season will just be an aberration. Teams will play each of their four divisional opponents ten times with their interleague games against teams in the same geographical region.
For the first time outside of the World Series in American League parks, the National League will used the designated hitter. In attempts to speed up extra inning games and perhaps preserve pitching, extra innings will begin with a man on second base.
As for personnel moves with the roster, teams will start with 30 players for the first two weeks and drop down to 28 for the next two weeks before finishing the season with 26 players. An additional group of players, up to 60, will be available per team to be called up to play in the Major Leagues at any point. The trade deadline, normally at the end of July, has been pushed back to the end of August.
With several members of the Philadelphia Phillies and Colorado Rockies already testing positive for the coronavirus, there will be an injured list for covid-19 that has no minimum or maximum stay requirements.
In attempts to contain the virus, players must be tested every other day. Players viewed as high-risk will be allowed to forego playing and still get paid. Social distancing practices, bans on spitting, chewing tobacco, pitchers using wet rags instead of licking fingers, members of team and staff wearing masks, lack of fans in the seats, will all be the norm for baseball this season.
Although the season is set to begin, the MLB Players Association is still likely going to file a grievance against the league for not implementing as complete of a season as possible. The league will surely counter such a grievance.