Players' Rejection of Owners' Offer Seems to Have MLB on Track for a July 24 Start to 2020 (Update)
The state of Major League Baseball is such that Monday’s rejection of the MLB’s proposal for a 60-game season by the Major League Baseball Players Association may actually be a step forward toward getting a 2020 MLB season going.
That's up to commissioner Rob Manfred.
After the MLBPA’s Executive Board voted 33-5 to turn thumbs’ down on the proposal. That opened the door for Manfred to implement a schedule for the 2020 season.
And he's opted for a 60-game season beginnign July 24-27 with a little more than three weeks of spring training, which would start July 1.
According to USA Today’s Bob Nightengale, the players have until 2 p.m. Tuesday if the players will accept the plan.
The season, if the players sign off, would end on Sept. 27, setting up a postseason that is likely to be expanded.
"Earlier this evening, the full Board reaffirmed the players' eagerness to return to work as soon and as safely as possible." The MLBPA said in a Monday statement. "While we had hoped to reach a revised back to work agreement with the league, the Players remain fully committed to proceeding under our current agreement and getting back on the field for the fans, for the game, and for each other."
The Oakland A’s and San Francisco Giants learned this week that all teams will do spring training at their home facilities, although both clubs had already been planning on that. All MLB Spring Training camps in Arizona and Florida were temporarily closed Friday after several teams reported positive COVID-19 tests last week.
The season is expected to see rosters expanded to 30 players and, with no minor leagues scheduled to play, each team will carry a taxi squad. Although nothing has been set, the A’s would likely park their taxi squad at their Class-A park in Stockton and the Giants likely would do so at their Triple-A park in Sacramento. MLB has told team the taxi squads need to be located within 150 miles of the home stadium.
There had been hope that the season, put on hold by the advent of the COVID-19 coronavirus would actually start on or around the Fourth of July holiday, but cantankerous bickering between the players and owners ground the process to a halt.
And until Manfred, who has been trying to avoid implementing a season because he doesn’t want to see the players take MLB to court for not scheduling something closer to the 70-plus games the players had been holding out for. The players had originally started hoping to get in 100-plus games while the owners started at half that.
After weeks of negotiations, the owners barely moved. And as the calendar pages kept turning, the owners made it effectively impossible to play more than 70 games and at the same time have the season end by Sept. 27. The players’ union were willing to play into or through October, but the owners, concerned about suggests of return of the coronavirus in the fall, were having none of it.
There is a chance that MLB could opt to cancel the 2020 season, and while this is considered a longshot, the longer there is not schedule set, the better the chance that will happen. The season could also be cancelled due to a surge in coronavirus cases.
Follow Athletics insider John Hickey on Twitter: @JHickey3
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