After a labyrinthine journey, Major League Baseball is just about ready to exchange lineup cards to signal the start of action.
(Actually, there won’t be any such exchanges thanks to coronavirus, but you get the idea.)
The MLB Players Association notified commissioner Rob Manfred on Tuesday that its members intend to report to spring training by July 1 with the intention of playing 60 games, granting one of the owners two requests by their stated 5 p.m. deadline. The other ask, signing off on the health and safety protocols designed to protect the participants from coronavirus, plodded past the deadline into the evening Tuesday as the players and owners talked through those protocols’ many nuances. Nevertheless, industry sources remained confident that common ground could be found on these regulations with the understanding that, given the unprecedented nature of this season and the unpredictability of COVID-19, changes will be made on the fly.
As long as the two sides greenlight the health and safety rules, baseball officially will be back, with the hopes of a July 24 Opening Day — assuming the pandemic doesn’t rear its ugly head and destroy the whole operation.
The latest MLB Operations Manual, which made news upon its original release last month with proposed bans of spitting and clubhouse showers among many other wrinkles, includes additional tweaks that could go into effect. In the interest of halting the spread of germs, pitchers could bring a wet rag to the mound as a healthier alternative to licking their fingers, as first reported by MassLive.com.
As expected, the universal designated hitter likely will be used to protect pitchers; as things stand now, pitchers would return to hitting in the National League for 2021. And as a method of managing the length of games and limiting participants’ exposure to one another, the minor league rule of starting extra innings with a runner on second base could be utilized, although that would be taken out for the postseason. Furthermore, the three-batter minimum for pitchers, which Manfred instituted before the shutdown, appears probable to stick.
Many other rules must be formalized to cover myriad other departments, from roster management (there will be designated taxi squads, and Opening Day rosters likely will have 30 players) to a trade deadline (it will be August 31) to determining the schedule (the standard six divisions will exist, with regional travel only).
In the coming days, teams will learn if any high-profile players opt out, either because they are high-risk (in which case they’ll get paid with service time) or because they don’t deem this mini-season worth the effort and aren’t feeling particularly cooperative following Manfred’s unilateral implementation of the season’s length; these players would give up their salaries. Any of the latter defections would further hurt this season’s credibility, which already has taken a beating thanks to the bitter, torturous talks that brought things to this point and faces immense challenges in navigating the disease that has spiked in important baseball states like Arizona, Florida and Texas.
For all of the obstacles that loom, however, baseball has advanced to its on-deck circle. The buzz awaits as it strolls to home plate for the first pitch.