With MLB's Return Delayed, What's Next For A's-Giants Spring Showdowns?

Monday night was supposed to see the Athletics hosting the Giants in the Coliseum in the first game of the annual Bay Area end to spring training. Since that's not happening, what's next?

This was supposed to be the day, well the night, actually, when Major League Baseball returned to the Bay Area.

After a scheduled six-week spring training sojourn in Arizona, with a brief sojourn to Las Vegas, the Oakland A’s were due to return to the Coliseum Monday night for the first game of the annual Bay Bridge series, with the second game scheduled for Tuesday across San Francisco Bay at Oracle Park.

That’s not the reality we’re living in, of course. With the onset of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, baseball has sheltered in no particular place. The final dozen Cactus League games were scratched, as were Grapefruit League games in Florida.

Spring training camps were shut down, although the facilities were kept open so that players could work out and not risk doing so in crowded gyms, where transmission of the novel coronavirus likely would be more of a danger.

Players were told by MLB they should head home, but given that option, that didn’t seem to go over well. While originally it seemed that a majority of players remained near their camps, it seems that is changing over time.

So, what does the loss of the Bay Bridge series mean to the A’s and the Giants? Although the teams have been playing Bay Area games in the tune-up to the season for more than two decades, they’ve generally played three games instead of 2020’s scheduled two.

Last year the A’s swept all three games. In 2018, the Giants won two of three. This year, with the season scheduled to start on a Thursday rather than Friday as was the case last year, and with the teams both having a mandatory off day on Wednesday, the series was to be cut to two games.

Now it’s cut to none.

The question now – a minor question, admittedly – is whether or not games like those scheduled for today and Tuesday will be made up. Teams are likely going to need at least three weeks, maybe longer, to get players ready to go once the coronavirus plague is in the background. How much of that time will be spent in spring training-like games? And where will those games be held?

It’s likely that most of whatever games are mixed into the training will be in Arizona and Florida, but with average temperatures in late May in the Phoenix in the 95-degree range, Cactus League teams like the A’s and Giants may look for other options.

Maybe it would make sense for the A’s and Giants to tune up for the season with a series of games in the Bay Area, whenever baseball reenters American life.