As Major League Baseball evaluates options to begin and carry forward with a 2020 regular season, two options have rose to the forefront this week. Both include utilizing Spring Training facilities, with one scenario calling for division realignment.
That also would entail eliminating American and National Leagues, and keeping teams in their respective Cactus and Grapefruit Leagues. Meanwhile, first Arizona plan called for all 30 MLB teams to descend upon The Grand Canyon State for play to possibly begin in May.
MLB has reportedly received early support from health officials for that rough plan, though that doesn’t extend to all players.
While there are two possibilities that have become the center of debate, Los Angeles Dodgers president and CEO Stan Kasten emphasized MLB is not near a decision and a myriad options have been discussed, via “Petros and Money” on AM 570 L.A. Sports:
“To be fair, you heard one story on Tuesday and another story [Friday]. You have now heard about 1% of the things they are contemplating. Really, I would not put anything into any of those reports other than to say, ‘Sure, that’s being considered.’ Also, 98 other things are being considered. That’s the truth. And I don’t know which of any of them is where we will land. As Dr. Fauci said, the virus will tell us. We don’t know yet when it’s going to be safe going back to work. We don’t know if that will involve fans or not.
“For me to say anything different to you or our fans would not be truthful. The truth is we just do not know. We’re doing our best, we’re getting the best information we can and are doing the most with it. But at the end of the day we still just do not know. … To say we have it narrowed down to even a large group of options would not be accurate. We’re way bigger than that right now because there is so much that is unknown.
“We have a bucket of things we could do if we were able to start May 1. We have another bucket if it’s July 1, and another bucket if it’s Aug. 1. We’re all over the place. We have many, many different scenarios that we’re exploring. Now, all the research that we’re doing and the background checking we’re doing, it’ll all be important whenever we get a go-ahead.”
As reports of the initial Arizona plan surfaced, MLB issued a statement to clarify the league had not settled on one course of action nor submitted a proposal to the MLB Players Association.
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