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March 30, 2020 By: Mark Knudson

How MLB can salvage and make the 2020 season memorable

For the remainder of our days on this planet, we will never forget the Year 2020 – and for all the wrong reasons.

We’re living through a life and death nightmare of course, and sports take a back seat. But, sports do have a place in our collective recovery this year…when the time is right.

When it’s safe to come back, Major League Baseball can play a large role in the recovery of our collective psyche. That can’t happen soon enough for most of us.

Word is that MLB would like to have their delayed Opening Day happen around June 1^st. That’s probably overly optimistic. Given that the players will need at least two weeks, if not more, to get back into playing shape, it might be more realistic to target that day for the resumption of a fan-free Spring Training.

If it’s safe to congregate by mid-June (still a big if), then we could see MLB games again. But what kind of season does that leave us if everything stays the same? 90 games? A few doubleheaders could get the slate up over 100, but nothing that would approach a normal 162-game schedule.

So, as the bumper sticker says, “Why be normal?”

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It should be clear to everyone by this point that there cannot just be a resumption. There cannot be a “normal.”

Given the unique circumstances, Major League Baseball has an opportunity to do something radically creative and make 2020 a year to remember – as it pertains to the national pastime – for a far better reason.

Why not?

There are no guidelines here, no playbook for how to respond to the effects of this pandemic. There is no, “if this, then that” because THIS has never happened before. That opens up a world of possibilities for MLB to get super imaginative with no negative consequences. Commissioner Rob Manfred has shown a willingness to make small changes. Would he be willing to do something BIG, just for the short-term?

How about a plan that included more teams in an expanded postseason that’s played in a tournament setting at a neutral warm-weather site?

Radical? Yes.

Attention grabbing? Memorable? Absolutely.

This plan would include a 124-game regular season that starts on June 15^th after a two-week resumption of spring training (with no games/fans, just workouts.) It would include Sunday doubleheaders and a wildly revised post season format that would bring the top eight teams from both leagues together in Arizona for a unique, one-time-only MLB tournament to crown this year’s champion. The eight teams from each league would be the top two finishers in each of the three divisions, plus two more wild cards that had the next best records. The teams would be seeded one through eight. Then the fun would begin.

First, the regular season would begin on Monday, June 15^th or Tuesday, June 16^th depending on the team. The schedule picks up where it would have been at that point. Most teams will have missed about 72 games by then. In order to play that somewhat representative 124-game regular season schedule, 21 games can be made up starting September 28^th until Sunday, October 18^th. That puts the slate at 111 games. Sunday doubleheaders will need to be part of the schedule. There are 18 Sundays between June 21^st and October 18^th. That means teams could potentially add 18 more games to bring the season slate up to 129 games. Remember, players can’t/won’t want to play every single day, so let’s add five more off days into the deal and settle at each team playing a 124-game regular season. That means each MLB team would have missed out on playing 38 regular season games. Under the circumstances, that would be a terrific compromise.

So, after the games on Sunday, October 18^th, let’s speculate that the standings look like this:

In the National League:

1) Los Angeles Dodgers
2) Washington Nationals
3) St. Louis Cardinals
4) New York Mets
5) Arizona Diamondbacks
6) Cincinnati Reds
7) Philadelphia Phillies
8) Chicago Cubs.

In the American League:

1) New York Yankees
2) Oakland Athletics
3) Chicago White Sox
4) Tampa Bay Rays
5) Los Angeles Angels
6) Cleveland Indians
7) Minnesota Twins
8) Boston Red Sox.

The revised post season would start on Tuesday October 20^th with a series of eight-best-of-three preliminary round play-off series to be played at eight Spring Training sites in the greater Phoenix area: Salt River Fields in Scottsdale, the Cubs new facility in Mesa, Goodyear, Peoria, Surprise, Tempe, Glendale and the Giants facility in Scottsdale.

Everyone jets to the Valley of the Sun for the (sponsor name here) MLB post season tournament prelims. In the NL, the top-seeded Dodgers would meet the eighth-seeded Cubs at Surprise Stadium; #2 v #7, #3 v #6, and #4 v #5. Best of three to advance. Same thing in the AL.

As luck would have it, #1 seed New York meets #8 seed Boston in a best of three. They’d pack Salt River Fields for that series…and baseball’s lagging national TV ratings? Through the roof for this.

When these series are over, eight teams will be left standing. That’s exactly the number of teams that won’t be going to Omaha for the College World Series this year. So, it’s the perfect time for MLB to co-opt an idea from the college ranks, and hold a CWS-style eight team double-elimination tourney, starting on Saturday October 24^th and culminating with another best-of-three series two weeks later. All this takes place at Chase Field in Phoenix, and results in the crowning of this year’s World Series champ.

Going into November won’t be a problem weather-wise with everything being held in Phoenix.

Is this a drastic departure? Absolutely. Is it a long-term thing? No. Baseball is too ingrained in our collective lives to not have Opening Day 2021 as scheduled as we work to adjust to our “new normal” post-Coronavirus (we hope.) But what a great way this would be to make 2020 a unique and memorable season…for positive reasons.