A Reduced MLB Schedule & Expanded Playoffs Should Work Well for Athletics

The almost three months Major League Baseball has been sidelined has allowed the Oakland Athletics to get healthy. A shortened schedule will be an unknown variable, but GM David Forst likes where the club is as MLB prepares, maybe, to open up.

While it seems that Major League Baseball will be back sometime in July, it’s up in the air about just what the sport will look like.

For one thing, there’s the whole social distancing thing. In the age of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, the game will be played without fans and without spitting and with masks and with testing.

Then there’s the season itself. The owners are trying to hold firm at 60 games. The players, who are back negotiating after saying last week that negotiations were over with the whole “Tell us when; tell us where” thing, are trying to get that up to 70 games.

Whatever the final schedule dictates, isn’t not exactly clear what it means for the Oakland A’s. Because any resumption of baseball would include an expanded playoff system, the A’s will be in good shape to make the postseason. With 16 of 30 teams making the playoffs, some teams with losing records are almost certainly going to be in the playoffs.

The A’s, winners of 97 games each of the last two seasons and apparently with all of its pitching healthy, would seem like shoo-ins.

Good teams and bad teams both have streaks. The trouble is, winning streaks and losing streaks are going to be magnified. And one nasty losing streak could throw a wrench into anything else the A’s hope to do.

Baseball has always been a marathon. And while the sport has not been reduced to a sprint like it might have been if the season was to come down at once-proposed 48 games, when it gets to be something in the area of 65-70 games, it’s something closer to a middle-distance run. And the needs of a marathoner, a middle-distance runner and a sprinter are different, even if crossing the line first is the goal of all three.

Talking Wednesday on the club’s A’s Cast, Oakland general manager David Forst exuded confidence that the club will be postseason ready in a situation none of his players have ever experienced before. And the roster, which had been scheduled to be set at 26 men, is now expected to be at 30.

“I don’t know what it’s going to be like,” Forst said. “We have talked a little bit about it, and we’re trying to take a wait-and-see approach. The nicest thing for us is that we kind of know what our roster looks like.

“At the point we were at in spring training, we had a pretty good idea -- looking at a 26-man roster, we kind of had 30 guys for those 26 spots. It sounds like we’re going to start the season with 30, so we almost know exactly what our roster looks like given everybody’s health.”

Since the March 12 shutdown, right fielder Stephen Piscotty and pitchers Daniel Mengden, who were down to open the season on the disabled list, have had time to recover. A.J. Puk, who was looking at pitching in relief because he’d missed so much of the spring, will have every opportunity to win his expected job in the rotation.

And because there is no minor league season in the offing, teams are being enabled to put together a 20-man taxi squad in order for teams to have the capacity to call on reserves in the case of injury or poor performance. MLB has decreed that the taxi squad will need to be located within 150 miles of each team’s home park, and since the A’s Class-A California League team in Stockton in 70 miles away with a 15-year old facility, Banner Island Ballpark, that should be up to the task.

“And then you have the luxury of having that second group that it sounds like we’re going to get to host somewhere outside of Oakland,” Forst said. “I think there are going to be a lot of moving parts here but, at the end of the day, a good team is a good team no matter where they’re playing and no matter how many games the season is.”

Whenever the season starts, and however long it lasts, Forst says Oakland should be more than competitive.

“We liked our team coming into 2020,” Forst said, “and there’s no reason not to like it, no matter what the structure is going forward.”

Follow Athletics insider John Hickey on Twitter: @JHickey3

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