MLB Preparing to Send Return to Play Proposal to Union

The ongoing saga of seeing when pro sports will return to their respective playing surfaces this season rages on, though we’ve seen some positive signs in the past couple of weeks. We know that NASCAR will return next week and golf is slated to come back next month. There’s been baseball in Taiwan for nearly a month and the KBO got started earlier this week in South Korea. Finally, there seems to be positive momentum for sports to return in North America and it starts on the diamond.

According to Jeff Passan, Major League Baseball is expected to send a proposal for a return to play to the union within the next week. Under the current timeline, players could report to camp for a second “spring training” of sorts in June with teams expected to kick off the season in early July. That would allow teams to play roughly 100 games before getting to the postseason. That’s music to the ears of players and fans alike, as both groups have been waiting to get things moving in a positive direction.

There are reports that more than a dozen teams have reached out to players, alerting them to ramp up their baseball activities in order to get into shape for spring training and the eventual season start. According to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, the Indians have told their players to prepare for a July 1 season start and that the second edition of spring training would start off sometime around June 10, giving players three weeks to get up to speed before the start of the season. Surprisingly, it wasn’t any of the big national writers that broke the story initially but former major leaguer Trevor Plouffe, who posted on Twitter Monday about the dates that baseball might return.

When asked about the potential return of the season, Rosenthal said this week:

“League and club officials remain confident the sport will return in 2020, but a number of team executives were fretting Tuesday over the possibility of outbreaks of the virus in states starting to open up, such as Florida, Texas and Arizona, which often are mentioned as potential hubs in various startup plans. New surges might lead to additional shutdowns, making it difficult for baseball to resume."

In another bit of news about the proposed plan, teams will actually play in their home parks under this system, as opposed to the hub concept of having teams centered in Arizona, Florida and Texas or a variation of that trio. Those plans were considered frontrunners to get the MLB season back on the ground in the early going but have been cast aside due to the logistical nightmares that they would create. The ability to play in a team’s home park and city allows for easier social distancing outside of games. In addition, players would be with their families instead of being separated from them as it would have been in the hub format.

While nothing is set in stone at this point, things are trending toward a potential return of play this season. Opening Day was scheduled for March 26 but was pushed back on March 12 as all pro sports in the United States were halted in a 24-hour span.