Here's how desperate the Lords of Baseball are to get the 2020 season underway.
According to Bob Nightengale of USA Today, a temporary realignment plan is being considered so that they can start the regular season in June. The twist? The two leagues, National & American, would be merged together, division by division, in 3 10-team divisions.
Yeah, it's weird. The Mets & Yankees in the same division. Ditto for the Cubs & White Sox, Angels & Dodgers, taking away the uniqueness of their annual interleague series. Another twist is that there will not be any inter-division games to save on travel and minimalize the risk of another wave of COVID-19.
In other words, in order to meet the goal of a maximum of, say, 110 games, each team would play the others in their division anywhere from 11-13 times. Under normal circumstances, you would have teams meeting their divisional opponents 18-19 times a year, 6-7 against the teams in the other divisions.
Had the schedule remained intact this year, the NL East would've met the AL West, for example, plus their territorial rivals in the opposite league. Would fans in say, Ohio, stomach 11-13 games between the Indians and Reds? Or how about Tampa Bay vs. Miami? You wouldn't want to have interleague play for 2-3 years after this.
They're also talking about extended playoffs. Gotta make sure you maximize that almighty dolla-dolla bill, y'all, for the networks and advertisers.
Roughly translated, the defending World Series champion Washington Nationals have to navigate an even rougher mine field in order to repeat. And if teams expected to contend (i.e. Mets, Phillies) get out of the gate slowly, the media will castrate this idea and call for Commissioner Rob Manfred's head. Trust me, that will happen.
At least it beats Scott "20 Mule Team" Boras' stupid idea of extending the season to Christmas......
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