Major League Baseball will reportedly present owners and the players association with a return-to-play proposal next week, according to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. Under the plan, if baseball can return this year, MLB’s regular season would start in early July with the goal of playing approximately 78 to 82 games.
Rosenthal reports that owners are expected to discuss the plan on a conference call Monday and if they give their approval, the league will present the proposal to the union on Tuesday.
“Any plan also would require sign-off from medical experts and confidence that testing for the virus would be sufficiently available,” Rosenthal writes.
MLB is hoping that many home ballparks — including in New York and Toronto — would be open by early July. Travel between the U.S. and Canada has been restricted until at least May 21 and travellers are subject to a mandatory 14-day quarantine upon arrival in Canada.
Teams unable to open stadiums for games would relocate to their spring training facility or another ballpark in the U.S. Sportsnet‘s Shi Davidi reported on May 6 that the Toronto Blue Jays are planning to be able to play at the Rogers Centre in Toronto or the club’s spring training facility in Dunedin, Fla., depending on the circumstances.
Rosenthal says that the schedule would be regionalized with teams facing clubs within their division and from the same geographic division in the opposite league. In that scenario, for example, teams in the American League East would face their own division plus teams in the National League East. He adds that a 78-game schedule would have four three-game series against each division opponent and two three-game series against each non-division opponent.
When it comes to the playoffs, Rosenthal says that the league will propose an extended post-season with seven teams per league instead of five. The teams with the best record in the American League and National League will receive a bye into the Division Series. The two other division winners and the wild card with the best record would face the bottom three wild cards in a best-of-three series.
Finally, Rosenthal reports the league will ask the players to further reduce their pay for the season and accept a revenue-sharing plan — for the 2020 campaign only — due to the lack of ticket revenue. This is said to be causing some friction between the two sides.
In March, the players agreed to be paid a prorated salary in the case of a shortened season but MLB says teams would operate at a loss if they paid each player their salary for games in empty stadiums. The union, according to Rosenthal, will need to see proof of this before agreeing to any alternative compensation plan.
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