According to Joel Sherman of the New York Post, MLB is expected to make their first formal proposal to the players union next week regarding the possible start of the 2020 season. Sherman has new details from the proposal. Here’s some quick points, which are expanded on it the article linked above.
**The schedule will be roughly 80 games and it will start in early July after three weeks of Spring Training. Some people still want 100 games, but 80’ish seems most likely.
**Clubs will have expanded rosters and a taxi squad, but no minor league feeder system. My guess is that’s a way to say that there won’t be standard minor league games, but teams will have players ready to play at their Spring Training facilities. As a side note, Larry Broadway (Pirates Senior Director of Minor League Operations) touched on this topic in an interview with Dan Zangrilli on 93.7 The Fan today, saying that there could be a minor league system running at Pirate City with prospects and players needed as extras for the big league team. It wasn’t a plan, rather a possibility, but it’s interesting to note with the news that came out today.
**The playoffs could be expanded to include 14 teams, which is something that has been discussed for future seasons. MLB TV revenue goes up in the playoffs, so they want to take advantage of more games to help offset some of the lost revenue.
**They are looking into ways to minimize travel, such as longer series and playing series against teams closer in distance.
**There are also talks about players taking pay cuts, which needs to be discussed. That’s a different subject than coming up with a schedule, but equally important that the sides come to a quick agreement here so everything else can move forward.
All of these things come with the painfully obvious caveat that the safety of everyone involved is utmost important and they will only go off if possible. They need a plan in place though before everything can start up, so this is a step in that direction. Sherman mentions Tuesday as the possible proposal date, so we could hear more details then.
