Play Ball! Are there two sweeter words in the English language? Not to me. After months of bitter negotiations, back and forth, posturing, complaining, news leaks, and of course absolutely no baseball at all, baseball fans finally have something to look forward to. I certainly have some hard feelings towards those I consider to be responsible for the bitterness of the negotiations, but I’m ready to put them aside for now and just be happy that we’re going to have our game back. Since this is Failure Sports after all, I could fill pages with all the different ways this process has been an abysmal failure, but today I simply choose not to. I’d like to focus solely on success for this piece, because I see a whole lot of that stuff going around, especially from the fan’s perspective. For those of us who really love the game things really couldn’t have turned out much better – you know, other than the harsh fact that playing the season at all puts people at risk from a deadly disease and it could get cancelled at any time, not the mention the lasting damage done to the game and the ominous cloud of another even more bitter work stoppage dangling over our heads.

Alright, I promise to stop with the gloom and doom. Let’s start talking about the success! For starters, we get 60 games. Clearly 60 games is barely enough to whet the appetite of a baseball fan like me, but given the circumstances it feels like an embarrassment of riches. When the players rejected the owner’s final offer, it seemed a foregone conclusion that if Manfred even implemented a season at all it would be less than 60 games, maybe even as few as 48. Twelve ballgames isn’t an eternity, but it sure seems like one right now, and I’m glad for every single one. I don’t care in the least that the sample size is far too small to give an accurate picture of who the better team is. I don’t care that the restrictions create a schedule that will only have fans seeing their hometown team compete against a third of the league. I’ll dearly miss many match-ups that I’ve taken for granted for decades, but it seems insignificant when compared to the upsides. 

Speaking of the upside of 60 games, there are many. What we’ll lose in the marathon grind of a normal baseball season that reveals the true best competitors, we’ll gain in intensity, excitement, and parity. With the drastic shortage of games, each one becomes magnified in it’s significance. Superstars will not be given many days of rest beyond the scheduled off days. Managers will treat every game like a playoff game, deploying bullpens and pinch hitters with a win-at-all-costs mentality. One essential element of baseball is the marathon philosophy, where optimum strategy requires making small sacrifices in the chance of winning “today’s game” in the interest of increasing the chances of winning the most games over the long haul. Those strategies are out the window this year, and I think it’s going to make for some very exciting baseball. Over the course of a 162 game season, a team that plays .600 ball wins 97 games and is all but assured of a berth in October. This season, a team that plays .600 ball will end up 36-24, only a handful of games ahead of a team that finishes under .500. It’s hard to imagine exactly what it’s going to take to lock in a playoff spot, but it seems logical that there will be many teams in contention for the majority of the games. We may even end up with the Wild Card tie the league has desired ever since the dual Wild Card format began.

It’s going to be incredibly strange to have a baseball season where the Red Sox don’t make a road trip through Anaheim, Oakland, and Seattle. How can it even be a real baseball season if Terry Francona doesn’t visit the opposing dugout at Fenway to trade friendly jabs along with top-notch strategy? However, with almost 20% of the season taking place against each of the other four division rivals, those rivalries will be magnified in intensity the same way individual games will be. In a normal season it might be easy for a team to run out some bench players and a minor league call up starter at the tail end of a series against a weak divisional opponent, but there will be none of that in 2020. Taking the division crown can no longer be achieved by treading water inside the division and feasting on weaker foes elsewhere. With the uncertainty and variance in the Wild Card, winning the division will be at an extreme premium, and division rivals will be battling tooth and nail for supremecy.

There is another fascinating element behind the altered schedule in play, and that the playoffs themselves. It is extremely likely that each Wild Card game will feature two teams that have not played against each other at all during the season. It is assured that at least one playoff series in each league will also feature a matchup that did not occur during the regular season, and most likely that every series in both divisional rounds will. The World Series also has a good chance to do the same, not as unique but still a little out of the ordinary in the days of extensive interleague play. It reminds me of the ’80s when I fell in love with the game, when All Star Games and World Series matchups featured teams and players that felt somehow foreign and unfamiliar. It will be very interesting to see how the teams tackle the issue, and scouting and information will be at a premium come October. 

While one could clearly make an argument that it would have been far more “successful” for the owners and players to have reached an agreement rather than a stalemate, as fans we have a lot to be thankful to the players for in their unwillingness to cave into the final proposal. Had the players accepted, it would have ushered in drastic in-game changes that would have impacted the sport long beyond 2020. All the crazy rules were to be locked in for 2021, and getting rid of any of them in the new CBA would have proved a significant challenge. The most impactful to me was the expanded playoffs. I would never have complained about them for the shortened 2020 season. In fact, I may have even welcomed them, given how starved I am for any baseball at all. More games is better unequivocally. A bigger playoff field also makes logical sense in a season where the 162-game marathon hasn’t resoundingly separated the wheat from the chaff. Having 16 teams making the playoffs in a normal season on the other hand would be atrocious, and we all have won in 2021 and beyond by dodging that bullet. Giving a sub-.500 team the chance to knock off a 100-game winner – after playing 162 games? I don’t even want to imagine a world where that is a reality. The contrasts between baseball and other sports are part of what makes it appealing to me, and it’s continued ability to buck the trends and stand out are a lot of what makes it endearing through generations. Turning the playoffs into a crapshoot tournament in the sport where the relative talent discrepancies between the best and worst teams are the smallest would be one of the very few things that could significantly damage my long-term interest in the game. I know that we will likely have to deal with more teams in the playoffs someday, but hopefully that day is both far in the future and will take place after a league expansion. Putting more than 50% of the league into the postseason starting right now is something I am very glad we do not have to face.

We will have the DH in the NL for 2020, and while I am in favor of having a permanent DH in both leagues, I want the change to come naturally to the game rather than having it thrust upon us due to a pandemic. I’m glad that the topic will be revisited, and the decision made using logic with the overall good of the game in mind. In the meantime, I look at the implementation for 2020 as a huge win for all fans, regardless of your opinion on the NL’s DH. It minimizes the chances of injury to starting pitchers, which in turn minimizes the risk for us fans that an injury to a key starting pitcher will leave our team among the four or five clubs that finish a game or two out of a playoff spot. Even if you like your NL ball old-school that is a big positive, and for those of you who are opposed to an NL DH, this is a chance to see it in action without it being permanent. Maybe you’ll come around!

The biggest “loss” for fans in my opinion is the runner on 2nd base to begin all extra innings. I completely understand wanting to eliminate extended extra inning games during this truncated slate. I’m fine with it, and I’d be willing to give up even more to get this season started up. However, it clearly is a terrible rule. I’d dig deeper into why it is awful, but I’m assuming you’ve already figured it out since you like baseball enough to read an article on the internet about it. At the very least I wish we could have the runner on second base show up in the 12th inning, to give us two “regular” extra innings to try to finish it off before we toss the game out the window. Oh well, certainly takes some of the steam out of the close games, but at least there are games to have the steam taken out of. Fortunately for us we have a small win with this rule going away for the playoffs. This rule is not set to continue beyond this season, and I very much hope that it will go away and never come back. 

While less important in my opinion than rule changes that impact the actual game on the field, we fans chalk up another win with the owners being denied the ability to sell ads on the team uniforms. With Nike already paying over a billion dollars (to the broke owners who make such little money) to have their logo on the jerseys this isn’t exactly sacred ground, but there clearly is a difference between one logo from the uniform manufacturer and a bunch of logos from random companies. While it wouldn’t alter the game on the field, this is the big leagues, not your local little league team that needs sponsorship. I suppose it is eventually inevitable with so much money involved, but nice for the players to at least have it as a bargaining chip for the future. For us fans, since turning the uniforms into billboards is some toothpaste that is never going back in the tube, delaying the start of it as long as possible is the best we can do. 

There are plenty more small nuances that are going to be awfully weird this season, and plenty more risks with COVID-19 cases spiking all over the place and team personnel testing positive left and right. This may end up being nothing but wishful thinking after all. For the time being, I am enjoying having something to look forward to, and I have faith that MLB is big, smart, and rich enough to keep everyone involved safe in the midst of this pandemic. Not only does it feel great to have a real Opening Day on the horizon, but knowing that it will be a significantly better brand of baseball than the owners had in mind, not just this season, but for seasons to come is enough to let a lot of the bad feelings caused by the contentiousness of the negotiation process just fade away.