Athletics, Giants Would See Plenty of Each Other if Players Sign Off on Reopening Plan

AL and NL boundaries would remain intact under a proposed 82-game season being put forward by the owners and the commissioner's office. But teams in the West would only play other teams in either the AL West or NL West. The A's and Giants would see more of each other than ever before.

Sometime this evening, Major League players will get a first look at what the owners and the commission’s office see as a way to push an abbreviated version of the 2020 season forward.

On a midday Monday conference call, the owners signed off on the package, which would call for an 82-game season starting about the first week of July, an expanded roster, and an expanded postseason.

Most or all of the game would be played in each team’s home parks, although in a state like California, teams like the A’s and Giants might find playing all their home games at home difficult as the state slowly reopens. In that case games could be played at the team’s spring training homes in Arizona at first.

The plans for scrapping the American and National leagues for a year and going with three 10-team divisions didn’t make the cut, at least not entirely. The AL and NL will remain intact. But the 82 games will be played only against teams from the same division and teams from the corresponding geographical division. So, the AL West will only play games against itself and the NL West.

So, while the A’s and the Giants won’t be in the same division, the impact will be about the same.

There will be an abbreviated Spring Training II of about three weeks beginning in June.

That’s assuming the players sign off on the deal. The best guess is that they probably will, but as the San Francisco Chronicle pointed out Monday, there are many reasons why players would be reticent, mostly around issues of health.

A case in point is that of A’s reliever Jake Diekman. He has ulcerative colitis, which is an autoimmune condition which the COVID-19 coronavirus could find appealing.

“There’s no way I want to get sick and bring it home to our 18-month old girl and possibly get her sick,” Diekman told the Chronicle.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said this week that he’s looking forward to “Major League Baseball and all sports resuming” in his state, which is home to five MLB teams, the Dodgers, Angels and Padres in addition to the Giants and the A’s.

“Then again the question is when,” Newsom said Monday in his daily coronavirus press briefing. “That will be determined on the basis of public health, public safety and the spread of this virus.”

California is in phase 2 of a four-phase reopening plan, and phase 3 is perhaps a month or two or more off. And Newsom said “won’t don’t anything that’s not consistent with state guidelines.”

The plan the owners are putting forward calls for expanding the postseason from 10 to 14 teams, adding an extra round of wild card games and possibly implementing a universal designated hitter.

Rosters would be expanded from 26 to 30 players. And each team would have a 20-man taxi squad, players picked from each organization’s top minor league players.

Follow Athletics insider John Hickey on Twitter: @JHickey3

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