Last night Cincinnati Reds President of Baseball Operations spoke to the media via a conference call from Goodyear, Arizona. He spoke about what’s happening there with regards to the Reds big leaguers, minor leaguers, and staff. He also shared some thoughts on what he expected things could look like once baseball is ready to resume.
But that last sentence there is a big sticking point, isn’t it? Major League Baseball announced the official delay to the start of the season by “at least two weeks”. After yesterday’s announcement that players would be allowed to leave spring training facilities and go home if they chose, that all but ended the chances of the season starting two weeks late. The timetable just won’t work if players aren’t remaining at the facility and continuing to work out and stay “on target”.
Scott Miller of Bleacher Report and MLB Network Radio just published a piece about the fallout of all of this for Major League Baseball. Within the piece he noted that several sources he spoke with “swear the season won’t begin until June”.
Some industry sources think it will be May before the MLB season begins. Two sources say they’ve heard Memorial Day Weekend as a target date, and multiple other sources swear the season will not begin until June. Clearly, the coronavirus and the health of the nation will have much to say about all of it.
At this point, that last sentence is key to everything. We don’t know how this is going to play out, and daily, around this country, things are changing. Major League Baseball officials are doing the best that they can to try and come up with plans, but for the most part setting dates on those things are next to impossible at this point in time. As my favorite meme, and your favorite dinosaur movie says: Hold onto your butts.
Do not think it will be June.
When the weather heats up, these viruses show down.
It will take a couple of weeks of extended ST to get ready.
My wild guess (keeping it clean here). Is .. Sometime in Early May.
Of course, I have no way of knowing.
Stay healthy everyone.
There’s no certainty that warm weather will slow it down, and we are reportedly several weeks away from the peak. I’m pretty sure that all or most of the 2-week delays across the spectrum are simply buying time in the hope that more information will be available.
It’s summer in the Southern Hemisphere (Australia) and the virus hasn’t slowed down one bit.
I think optimistic people could think early May like a possible season start, however there are reserved opinions too estimating mid june for opening day but IMO all depends in what will happen in the next week… I wonder if MLB is considering the likelihood of season canceling … that really scare me…
Kick us while we’re down
🙁
West Virginia, Zero cases reported so far. Alaska only has 1. Time to pack everyone.
Totally kidding.
I think Middle of May seems like a realistic situation based on the information that is out there. If things continue to get worse over the next two weeks. We could be looking at June or July even.
As I’ve been saying Memorial Day/weekend is my hope. It’s the unofficial start of summer
Whenever they can get baseball back, us fans will be ready. The focus must be the health of all concerned. It appears Trevor Bauer is proposing, along with other players, a sandlot game in Arizona to benefit stadium workers. Good for him. That’s leadership we need.
Memorial Day seems like a good planning target. Now until May 1st will show us the state of health, and allow 2 more weeks to watch with May 15 as Spring Training reopening – then the holiday weekend for the opener. Otherwise, keep a moving 2 week target for the health data to calm.
I still favor a Xmas World Series with Nov./Dec. games at the training sites. Would give us a 140+ game season.
75 games against the Pirates sounds good…
Playing the games in empty stadiums is the answer. We can all watch on TV.
This keeps the advertisers and the game alive.
The season starts way too early anyway. However, be it middle of May or even June, the upside is that every game will mean something this year. Getting off to a good start takes on added value now.
You’re right that the season starts way too early. It happens in most sports. Money, money, where the playoffs extend into the time of the next sport waiting in line.
Your in-person report from China reinforces my belief that, as you say, we haven’t seen anything yet. It’s my belief that the message is beginning to be heard and understood, but not yet by everyone.
Today the CDC issued a recommendation that all events of 50 or more people be cancelled for at least the next 8 weeks: https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/15/health/us-coronavirus-sunday-updates/index.html
That would put us at mid-May, and I believe that’s optimistic. I would love to be wrong.
Even 8 weeks from now would put us to mid-May for the start of any team activities. So June, at the earliest if we could get through a 2-week spring training phase, and teams stuck to the CDC recommendation of 8 weeks.
Suspend the Astros right now for the whole season. Let the rest of the teams play in Arizona without fans in attendance. There will be no plane travel even though teams use their own private charters.