Sports Time Radio

The Major League Baseball season was scheduled to start this past Thursday, but with everything going on not only in the United States, but around the world that didn’t happen. Now unfortunately we knew that this was going to take place, but we did get some news from MLB on what we hope will be the upcoming season.

I don;t know if this was an official statement from the owners or if it was just something a reporter picked up, but it came out a few days ago that the owners want to play close to the 162 game regular season schedule as possible. Now I haven’t heard how many games they’re actually going to try to play, but there have been some numbers thrown out. For almost a month now that 81 game season has been out there, but after the report about what the owner want to do I heard closer to 120 game season with someone actually going as high as 140 games. Now I think it would be next to impossible to get 140 games in, but if they get started soon enough they could be able to get 120 game regular season in.

Now to get any kind of decent umber of games in there would have to be multiple doubleheader played by every team and the owners and the Major League Baseball Players Association got together to come up with a plan. I was actually surprised to hear that they seem to have come to an agreement on some things.

As of right now there is no schedule; so we don;t know when the season would actually start, but the Commissioner’s office will put together a schedule at the appropriate time and the players association will have input before it’s finalized.

The biggest issue for the players association was how service time was going to be handle if the season was shorten or not played at all and they where able to come to an agreement on that.

A regular year of service time is considered to be 172 days. For this season if a player is on the roster or IL for the entire season he will accrue those 172 days of service time no matter how many games they play in the 2020 season.

In what would be the worst case scenario for baseball fans if there is no season players will be credited with the same amount of service time they had for the 2019 season. That means players who are one year away from free agency would become free agents next fall no matter what.

Here are some of the other things they agreed on.

As of yesterday March 27th all transactions are frozen. A date will be decided upon by the players association and MLB on when roster moves can start being made again. Roster expansion was not agreed upon, but it was discussed. There where some reports that roster would expand to 29 players for the 2020 season, but that’s not going to happen right now. It’s possible the issue may be revisited later; so we may see change in roster size.

The MLB draft is currently scheduled for June 10th, but MLB has the option to move that date. Is was set that the draft has to take place before July 20th. The draft can also be reduced to 5 rounds, but MLB has the option to have the draft go anywhere between 5 and 40 rounds.

MLB has also reserved the right to run a combine for amateur players in 2020 and 2021 if the league decides it makes sense to do so.

Drafted players will receive no more than $100,000 of their signing bonuses up front, receiving 50 percent of the remainder by July 1, 2021, and the other 50 percent by July 1, 2022. Undrafted players will be able to receive no more than $20,000 as a signing bonus. Signing bonus values will remain at their 2019 level in both 2020 and 2021, according to terms of the new deal. MLB can also reduce the 2021 Draft to as few as 20 rounds.

There is also a chance that the international signing period will be pushed back. it was schedule for a July 2nd 2020 start, but may be pushed back as far as January 15th 2021. Next years international signing period can also be pushed back if needed. It was also decided that teams will not be allowed to trade draft picks or international bonus slots in 2020 or 2021.

I have to say it was nice to see the owner and the players association actually work together so quickly to get some type of agreement in place for when the 2020 season starts. Of course there will still be a few things to deal with when we finally get a start date for the season, but it’s much better to see them working together than at odds over every little thing.

There was a push by the general managers in the NFL to delay the upcoming draft, but commissioner Roger Goodell and the NFL’s Management Council Executive Committee discussed the issues on Thursday and decided that unanimously that the draft will take place as scheduled April 23rd through April 25th.

I believe this was a good choice by the NFL. The NFL was able to conduct free agency while dealing with the Covid-19 virus and the draft should be no different. Now to no one’s surprise all of the fan events and meet and greets that where schedule to take place in Las Vegas at the draft have been canceled. That is just good common sense for the NFL to do that, but that draft can happen without people actually having to get together.

I know there will still be complaints from some general managers, but if I’m a fan of one of the teams that are complaining I’d be stating to wonder why they’re not ready to draft. I guess there could be some physical concerns about a player and I’m not sure if they would be allowed to have him checked medically, but other than a possible unseen injury what else could general managers be concerned about?

Let me know if you think the NFL made the right call in keeping the draft where it is or do you think they should’ve postponed it?

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