MLB, MLBPA agree to report in July, play 60-game season
By Ty Anderson, 985TheSportsHub.com
Baseball will be back. As soon as next week, too, in fact, as the MLB and MLBPA have agreed to report to training camps by July 1 and play a 60-game season. ESPN’s Jeff Passan, a man who has probably lost about 10 years off his life documenting this nightmarish saga from start to finish, was the first to report the news.
The sides still have one last health-and-safety hurdle for the league remains, according to Passan, but the expectation seems to be that the sides will be back to work in time for that July 1 opening.
After the MLBPA overwhelmingly rejected the league’s offer on Monday night, the MLB responded with a unanimous vote to implement a 60-game season that came with a Tuesday late afternoon (at 5:30 p.m. to be exact) deadline. Now, the sides obviously didn’t completely hammer out all the details by that 5:30 p.m. deadline the league tried to impose, but getting one of the two biggest issues facing the league out of the way is a positive sign, especially when it relates to the scheduling of it all.
Should the MLB and MLBPA get back to work for July 1, it’s believed that Opening Day would come three weeks after this Training Camp ramp-up, and be sometime towards the end of July.
And should this camp be exactly three weeks and go on without a delay, you could very well see the Boston Red Sox begin their 2020 season with a series against the New York Yankees, as the rivals were originally scheduled to have a three-game series at Yankee Stadium beginning July 24.
