After months of failed negotiations between Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association, the sport, mercifully, will return. Yes, the 2020 MLB season will begin July 23 or 24, with a 60-game sprint to follow.
While many fans are just happy that baseball is back, at least one reporter wonders if the product on the field will suffer.
“My big thing is I don’t know what the quality of play is going to be like,” WFAN’s Sweeny Murti said on The Zach Gelb Show. “I don’t think it’s going to be great because there’s still such a great chance of injury and less time for players to recover from injury. So I think you’re going to see teams diving deep into their reserve of players from Triple-A and Double-A levels. Who knows who’s left standing and what kind of teams are out there on the field competing? It’s wide open. The teams that you think are good should be the ones you think are good, but one injury changes that. Anybody can be cold at the start of the season; anybody can be hot at the start of the season. That will shape a lot of what [happens].”
Many analysts believe that the months-long public spat between the players and owners will cause irreparable harm to the game. Even Reds pitcher Trevor Bauer said the PR nightmare drove baseball “straight off a cliff.”
When “Opening Day” arrives, though, Murti believes most fans will put those bad feelings behind them.
“No matter how badly people have reacted to this, when it’s on, I think you’re going to watch,” Murti said. “I don’t think you’re going to be able to turn away because that’s what we do. We watch sports. . . . I understand all the bad feelings, but I think the game is the game and we’re going to watch the game.”
As for whether the 2020 World Series champion will be legitimate in the eyes of fans and baseball historians, Murti isn’t too concerned.
“We don’t have to have special accommodations for where we rank these teams,” he said. “Let them play, let them win and have a little common sense. Our airwaves and our social media feeds can debate this from now until the end of time. But I don’t feel the need to mark it in red just because you think somebody is going to forget that this was different than some other season.”