MLB Owners Approve Proposal for Possible Shortened 2020 Season

We’re a step closer to having baseball in 2020 as the MLB owners have approved a proposal for the season to restart this summer.

As you’re well aware, MLB has been shut down for nearly two months as a result of the COVID-19, but as things start to settle down we could see baseball return soon.

The first step for the to happen was completed on Monday afternoon with the MLB owners approving a planned restart.

Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic was the first to report the result of the voting that was to take place today among the owners.

Rosenthal gives us the next step in this process as well noting that the owners will take this proposal to the MLB Players Union on Tuesday as their approval is needed before anything can be finalized.

As we talked about on our latest Tomahawk Take Podcast, there are still a lot of hurdles to overcome before baseball can be played this year.

However, at least MLB is making the effort and not giving up on the season — and those paychecks they’ll be making.

Jon Heyman reported that the proposal calls for an 82-game regular season, while Joel Sherman says the plan is still to have the playoffs in October and preferably at home ballparks.

I still think if they start in early July they can get in 100 games, but that will all depend on what the players want to do. They may not want to crunch in that many games and have to play a lot of double-headers, but 100 games would be a nice number to shoot for and give us a good regular season.

Playing at home parks really doesn’t matter unless fans are allowed in, but I’m sure players would feel more comfortable playing in their home parks — unless your home park is in Tampa or Oakland … sorry.

But the biggest hurdle in all of this — as it always is — will be about money.

Bob Nightengale says that the owners are proposing a 50/50 revenue split with the players.

Obviously, with no fans in attendance, there won’t be much revenue coming in this season. But if the owners and players can find some sort of common ground here, I think the rest will come into place.

Again, the owners will take this proposal to the MLBPA on Tuesday, so hopefully we’ll hear something soon. Check back at Tomahawk Take as we keep you updated throughout this process.