How Many Games Can MLB Realistically Play in 2020?
With the announcement last week that MLB would suspend spring training and delay Opening Day by at least two weeks, to say that the season’s future is uncertain would be an understatement. The most optimistic of scenarios — one in which the United States’ response to COVID-19 is suddenly and remarkably better than that of other, similar countries — had major league baseball resuming on April 9. The CDC has now recommended the postponement or cancellation of events with 50 or more people for the next eight weeks, which would prevent even spring training games. Update: MLB has announced further delays with a mid-May start the earliest possible date to begin the season in abiding by CDC guidelines. The two-week delay was merely be the first, with an unknown number of weeks of the season lost. The league’s announcement that spring training facilities would be shuttered, and that many players would be returning home, points to a much longer delay; a second spring training will almost certainly be required to allow players time to ramp back up. Some executives are simply hoping for games at some point in May, per Jon Heyman. We don’t yet know how many games the league will play this season, but we can use potential start dates, with a few October regular season weeks and some summer doubleheaders baked in, and attempt to determine how many games the sport might lose as the country attempts to contain this pandemic.
Shorter regular seasons in baseball have been incredibly rare. While the work stoppages in 1994 and 1995 might be fresh in the minds of some, 23 MLB seasons have been played since then. Ronald Acuña Jr., Cody Bellinger, Rafael Devers, Jack Flaherty, and Juan Soto weren’t even born when the start of the 1995 season was delayed. The graph below shows the total number of MLB games played in every year since 1903, the year of the first World Series:
MLB has been playing roughly 2,400 games every year since expansion in the 1998 season, which saw the addition of the Rays and Diamondbacks to the league. In terms of games played, there hasn’t been a period this consistent since the pre-expansion era that began after World War I and lasted until 1961, when MLB began to expand beyond 16 teams to the 30 we have today. The Federal League competed with the American and National Leagues in 1914 and 1915 before folding and eventually losing an antitrust suit. By looking at games per team per season, the shortened seasons become even more obvious:
In 1918, MLB played fewer games as the conflict in Europe grew; a short schedule was continued into the 1919 season as well. Teams played essentially 154 games until expansion in 1961 and 1962 raised the number of games to 162. In the last 100 years, only three seasons have been shortened:
- In 1972, the players’ strike lasted a week and a half and the games were not made up, with teams averaging 155 games each.
- In 1981, a player strike wiped out much of June and all of July as teams averaged just 107 games per season, the lowest total in MLB history since the advent of the World Series.
- A strike in August 1994 ended the season at just 114 games per team.
- The work stoppage in 1994 continued into the following season, resulting in a 144-game schedule in 1995.
As for how many games we’ll miss this season, let’s start just by looking at the schedule and potential start dates. The amount of time between now and the return to camp will dictate how long players will need to get ready for the season, with a longer break meaning more time being necessary to get ready. In 1995, there were three weeks between the end of the strike and the start of the season, so it is difficult to imagine a period longer than that being necessary to get ready for the season.
The table below shows a variety of start dates from Memorial Day weekend through the fourth of July, with a final date just after the currently scheduled All-Star Game. The first reasonable Opening Day given recent spread of the virus and the states’ response, the CDC recommendation, and the necessity for another training period is May 21, eight weeks after the originally scheduled start of the season. In that scenario, players would need to be able to come back to spring training at a minimum by May 11, providing around 10 more days of preseason ball, which is about how many days the players had in 1981 after the midseason stoppage.
In the table, the number of games missed is based on the World Series champion Washington Nationals’ schedule:
| Season Start | Games Missed | Games Remaining |
|---|---|---|
| May 21 | 48 | 114 |
| May 28 | 54 | 108 |
| June 4 | 61 | 101 |
| June 11 | 67 | 95 |
| June 18 | 73 | 89 |
| June 25 | 80 | 92 |
| July 2 | 87 | 85 |
| July 16 | 97 | 75 |
Without a change to the schedule, any delay beyond Memorial Day would result in the shortest season in well over 100 years. The most likely potential change would be making the regular season two weeks longer, with games stretching into October. That brings with it the risk of some very cold baseball, particularly if a cold-weather team makes the World Series, though late-March and early April aren’t much different from late-October and early November. By adding those two extra weeks, the potential schedule looks like this:
| Season Start | Games Missed | Games Remaining | Season Ends 10/11 Games Missed | Max Games Possible |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 21 | 48 | 114 | 36 | 126 |
| May 28 | 54 | 108 | 42 | 120 |
| June 4 | 61 | 101 | 49 | 113 |
| June 11 | 67 | 95 | 55 | 107 |
| June 18 | 73 | 89 | 61 | 101 |
| June 25 | 80 | 82 | 68 | 94 |
| July 2 | 87 | 75 | 75 | 87 |
| July 16 | 97 | 65 | 85 | 77 |
If the season is pushed to Memorial Day, 120 games might be possible. If the season can’t start by the second week in June, we will be looking at a season shorter than the 1981 campaign. If MLB were to extend play by four weeks beyond the season’s originally scheduled end, we could end up dealing with some very cold playoff games and for the also-rans, a bunch of empty stadiums in the middle of October as the regular season winds down. That said, an extra four weeks would buy the sport a lot more games this season:
| Season Start | Games Missed | Games Remaining | Season Ends 10/25 Games Missed | Max Games Possible |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 21 | 48 | 114 | 24 | 138 |
| May 28 | 54 | 108 | 30 | 132 |
| June 4 | 61 | 101 | 37 | 125 |
| June 11 | 67 | 95 | 43 | 119 |
| June 18 | 73 | 89 | 49 | 113 |
| June 25 | 80 | 82 | 56 | 106 |
| July 2 | 87 | 75 | 63 | 99 |
| July 16 | 97 | 65 | 73 | 89 |
A Memorial Day weekend start would get more than 80% of the schedule played if the regular season went until near the end of October, but it is hard to envision playing much more than that with the information we have now. There is the possibility of packing more games into the schedule by increasing the number of doubleheaders, but it’s unclear how feasible that scenario might be. While many aspects of a shortened season will need some negotiating between the players and the union, the current CBA allows for just one pre-scheduled day-night doubleheader — which allows for two games and two sets of fans in attendance — and three twi-night doubleheaders — in which two games are played, with one in the afternoon followed immediately by another at night — per season. The latter might get more games in, but isn’t especially desirable by teams, as they won’t be able to split attendance. The most feasible split doubleheader day is likely Saturday, but a night game Friday followed by a doubleheader Saturday across nine hours followed by a day game Sunday isn’t likely to go over well with the union, and could result in a decline in the quality of play due to playing four games in under 48 hours. Adding a few doubleheaders here and there is probably feasible during the summer, but packing in a dozen might be a bit much, and all without much benefit for the players, teams, or fans.
Baseball seems very likely to lose some number of games that it won’t be able to make up over the course of the season. Given how quickly the course of COVID-19 is changing, attempting to guess exactly how many seems like an exercise in folly right now. But just as we are experiencing a pandemic the scale of which is unprecedented in our lifetime, this baseball season is likely to be without precedent as well.
Craig Edwards can be found on twitter @craigjedwards.
My first thought is that a shorter season might allow for more variance around the projections, giving middling teams a better chance to make the playoffs. Thoughts?
Agreed. I think this also theoretically gives some benefit to the teams in cold weather areas, since they’ll be starting later and thus have to deal with less of a cold snap.
Seems like if there were a cold weather effect, it would pop out of the data pretty easily. Has this been the case?
Additional variance added for the chance a player gets virus and larger than normal subs needed.
Last year, looking at just May 1st onward, here are the teams that would have made the post-season:
WSN-NYY
MIL-MIN
LAD-HOU
ATL-OAK
STL-TBR
… same 10 teams actually made it, but the Nationals and Brewers went in as wildcard teams instead of Washington and St Louis.
In 2018, they matched exactly. In 2017, they matched except for the Brewers vs Rockies for the second wildcard. In 2016, Mets v Cards and Orioles v Astros for second wildcards were the only differences.
Overall, excluding the first month of the season makes pretty little difference in the end, though had those Aprils not happened, perhaps there would have been some different trade decisions at the trade deadline…?
—
That said, looks like many people are thinking ~100 games might be all we get, which would be more like June forward
End the 2019 season on August 31, though, and Cleveland ties Oakland for the second AL Wild Card while the Cubs beat Milwaukee for the second NL Wild Card. And if you end the season on Aug. 1 (~105 games), Cleveland would get the first WC and Tampa and Oakland would have to play the tiebreaker, while over in the NL you’d have a 3-way tie between Washington, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee for the WC.
And in 2018, if the season ended on Aug. 1, all 3 division winners in the NL would have been different. Even ending the season on Aug. 31 results in a different division winner in both the NL Central and West, and the Dodgers would have missed out on the playoffs entirely instead of, you know, going to the World Series.
I wonder if knowing, in advance, that the season is shorter might make prior projections less effective (since the starting conditions are different)? But still a great point!
I’d be curious to see how the playoff odds change with various shorter season lengths. How short does the season need to be in order to get my Giants over 1%?
I’m going to cry.
The history does look a little different if you think that (at least for championship purposes) 1981 had two short seasons.
Man, that was an f’n disaster…
“In the National League, the Phillies and Dodgers won their respective divisions in the first half, while the Expos and Astros won their divisions in the second half. However, none of those four teams had the best record in the division overall. In 1981, the Cincinnati Reds had the best record in baseball by 2.5 games, but missed the playoffs entirely, while eight teams with worse records got in. The overall NL East champion Cardinals also missed the playoffs, despite finishing two games ahead of the Expos and 2.5 games ahead of the Phillies overall.”
That 1st/2nd half division winner format is how the Atlantic League determines playoff teams every season! (It makes more sense for them because of the huge amount of roster turnover many teams in that league experience every year.) Also, some (at least 1 that I know of) soccer leagues in smaller European countries have it so that first-half wins and draws are essentially half as valuable as those in the second half. It is interesting how much we think of certain ways of doing things as the “right” ways just because we have always done them that way.
I think a start around July 1, with the All Star game canceled makes the most sense. LA could get the game awarded in 2022 (assuming MLB doesn’t want to change the 2021 location). That would allow about 80-90 games if the season is extended just a bit and without a ton of extra double-headers. I think getting in 81 games might be the best option at this point.
The shorter the season goes, the more likely the MLB will come up with a playoff scheme that includes more teams. Depending how short the season is, this may not be a bad thing.
At this point, I wonder if the MLB is thinking about canceling the season entirely and doing some wacky bracket-style games as an extended playoffs.
Wow I just got a terrible pit in my stomach reading that. Then I thought “nah, they aren’t that dumb”.
But then I remembered that Manfred is still the commissioner…
I believe it to be premature to write off the regular season at this point. We won’t really know where this is going for at least a month.
That said, if the regular season ends up very short, say, two months, then it makes senses to have a big tournament of some sort with the regular season weeding out the weakest teams and deciding seeds. Two months has so much variance that this is exactly the sort of schedule that lends itself to tournament playoffs; crapshoots are appropriate when it is not clear who the best teams are, plus it is exciting. They might even dump the divisions for this year and have, say, the top 8-12 teams go into some sort of elimination tournament. Maybe everyone goes in with the lowest seeds getting a best of 1 or 3.
I do not blame you for thinking the MLB will come up with something really dumb – we’ve already seen that with that 7 team playoff format – but it is hard to make a dumb playoff in this situation unless you try really hard. Just give us baseball games.
My personal opinion is that they should just give us as many games as possible and keep the playoff format the same. I just want lots and lots of baseball, and I hate the idea that this could open the door to some really terrible ideas long-term.
But I also would definitely expect them to try something like this.
Why would that be a dumb idea? It is looking likely that it will be quite late into the summer before anything could start, so why not? It is a lost year pretty much anyhow.
I’ve been thinking the exact same thing. If it starts looking like less than 100 games will be played, which seems like a likely scenario at this point, different structures are going to look more viable.
Yeah, as a faintest-of-faint silver lining, this situation may provide an opportunity for some interesting experimentation!
JMO the owners pay these greedy, greedy players for minimum 162 games. Owners expect revenues for 162 games, a few more if the franchise sees significant earning potential through the archaic act of winning games. Why should they get less? It is going to happen anyway but if these owners are shorted, even a penny, the taxpayers should have to pay for at least one new private stadium/entertainment complex
Assuming this is sarcasm? If not, then… um……
(Either way, maybe work on your delivery some?)
It’s pretty obviously sarcasm, of the brute force variety. The last sentence should make it obvious.
Last sentence? I call winning archaic in the second! Maybe calling it archaic is on the mark? That would seemingly fit with the general direction of pro sports and fandom
When at least one owner gets their entertainment development (the early lead for sports word of the decade) paid for WITH necessary tax breaks then we we will know the pandemic is over and things are great again
When the 1995 shortened season happened, how long once the labor issues were resolved did the games begin? What was the ramp up period? Likely a bit shorter than we’d have now, since players could still meet up and workout together.
The strike officially ended on April 2. Opening day was April 25.
This is something we should maybe get used to, too since there is a CBA negotiation coming up and a real possibility of a lockout
Based on what? Pandemic aside, the only thing the owners would lock out about is if they could not re-negotiate a new national TV deal. The MLBPA’s demands (get back to a 50-50 share of revenues by getting more money to young stars) in a new CBA are relatively easy to meet, as we’ve discussed here many, many times.
Perhaps they can all get on a nice Zoom teleconference session and negotiate it now? As long as we’re all sitting around waiting and doing nothing
Neither side would want to negotiate before a new national TV deal is in place. And networks don’t want to bid on content until they know how long sports are suspended.
Zoom is basically not working, so that might not work. But they can try microsoft teams!
It gives me no pleasure to tell you all this: there ain’t gonna be baseball in 2020. At least not MLB games. No sports will reconvene until June at the earliest, and a July 1 start date for a season is just too condensed. The logistical and economic cost will not justify the benefits. Best case scenario, guys get a few months to goof around knock off some rust, minor league guys get 50 games or so to remind us they’re still here.
This is not clear. Are you saying no baseball this year, or no baseball until June at earliest? It’s pretty well-established that there’s going to be no baseball until Memorial Day weekend at the earliest…beyond that there are like a hundred factors.
My guess is that baseball starts memorial day weekends but they’ll be playing to empty stadiums for quite a while. Having baseball teams play and travel seems to be much less of a risk for spreading infection than putting tens of thousands of people in one space.
But at this point, we really have no idea. We could have baseball come back in July, or even August, or in some unfortunate scenarios not at all. It’s up in the air.
I’m saying no sports of any kind will be played until June. That means a Major League Baseball season would be weeks behind, as teams will need to reconvene, get in shape, etc. Starting on July 1 just isn’t worth the inconvenience. Pretty clear: “there ain’t gonna be baseball in 2020. At least not MLB games”.
I think you underestimate the owners’ love of money (and hatred of losing money). There is no way they are going to say “Man, it’s such a logistical pain to figure all this out. Zero games is definitely better than 80.”
You especially should consider that whatever kind of insurance MLB has almost certainly doesn’t cover pandemics, so it’s not like playing no games gets them some kind of insurance payout.
I think you underestimate what this virus will do to the nation, its economy, and its infrastructure.
And I think you overestimate just that.
Bo Diaz is definitely overestimating their confidence is such an outcome.
It depends how long the pandemic itself goes on for. If the pandemic has subsided enough for limited business travel, then I think we’re getting baseball, even if nobody is in the stands. The infrastructure baseball teams use won’t be damaged enough to prevent them from playing games.
The only reason the whole season would be canceled is if virtually all business travel grinds to a halt through August. There is a non-zero chance that happens, but if that ends the teams will hold “summer training” and play 40 games if they have to.
I am pretty certain there will not be baseball till July. I could see no season as well, but when you say “it isn’t worth the inconvenience” that literally makes no sense at all. As soon as they can realistically play, they will.
I’m fascinated by this world where the players and owners all collectively agree that making money in a shortened season is just “too much of an inconvenience” and they’d rather just make no money until next year.
Unfortunately for you and them, the decision will be taken out of their hands. Cities simply won’t allow gatherings of that size or rework municipal planning to accommodate a few MLB games.
So now you’re saying that MLB will not be allowed to play starting July 1?
Yes, I’m saying that will eventually be the case.
While I don’t think cities will allow fans to attend, I suspect things are going to suck enough that cities bend over backwards to allow baseball to happen if they can test all the players and personel prior to each game. Travel accomodations for teams would be the biggest hurdle in my opinion as players and personel are going to want to know they are eating and staying at safe locations.
Opening Day if it happens this year will be a huge hopeful moment.
If games are played for TV only, teams can lessen (though not eliminate) some of the concerns about travel by using spring training parks.
I think that they’ll find a way to do it by some point in the summer. Baseball kept going during World War II when there was full-on rationing for the war effort. There will be pent-up demand to watch live sports, as snood mentions.
Some are talking possibly w/out fan attendance at least at first.
That’s certainly possible… given TV revenue seems at least as large as fan attendance revenue (including concessions).
TV revenue/viewership could even spike if they come back after months of no live sports + bans on big public events.
If they had to start the season in September, they would do a 2-month regular season and do a shortened playoffs in November. Baseball is going to be played
I’d be fine with half a season and playoffs as originally planned.
However, there are other possibilities if teams are willing to make some concessions. For starters, go NFL style and move the playoffs to warm weather locales and you can extend the season by maybe even a month (regular season until the end of October and playoffs in Phoenix, Florida, Los Angeles, etc).
However, if teams were willing to get even more drastic, you could extend the season into even December. By my count, there are 14 stadiums in which you could play baseball all the way into December – LA (x2), SD, SFG, OAK, ARI, TEX, HOU, ATL, MIA, TBR, MIL, TOR, SEA. If cold weather, non-dome teams were willing to split the home field revenue with those 14 teams, you could run regular season as normal through the end of October, then transition regular season games to those 14 stadiums and then post-season running into December. There are some obvious downsides to this, namely that 7 of the 14 are West Coast and none are in the Northeast, but I think it’s just the reality of it that franchises are going to have to make some concessions.
Even with a July 1st start (which I think is what we are going to be looking at, though I obviously hope that is too pessimistic, as I assume most everyone here hopes is too pessimistic) you should be able to get in 120-140 games and a full post-season.
I have a hard time seeing the union agreeing to something like that for a whole host of reasons. Even the teams would probably be leery. A guy who gets hurt in December 2020 might miss a significant portion of 2021
I’m curious what the whole host of reasons might be? There are no doubt logistical issues but they are workable. Yes, a guy that gets hurt in December might miss some time in 2021 but we aren’t talking THAT big of a time separation from a guy getting hurt in Oct.
I wouldn’t expect it to happen, but I guarantee you there are a bunch of MLB people sitting around spit-balling ideas just like this and I am 99.9% certain that this idea has come up already. Nobody is making anything if the teams don’t play.
“Nobody is making anything if the teams don’t play.”
That’s not clear at this point. MLB and the union sat down and talked this weekend. Pay is one of the topics they discussed. No decisions have been made at this point but I’d be shocked if the players were paid nothing.
“I’m curious what the whole host of reasons might be?”
1) Bad precedent for the union to agree to something like this. Even if there’s some short-term gain, there’s no long-term gain for the players.
2) The union has to worry about players’ physical and psychological health. The regular season is a grind. Asking players to finish off one long season and then turn around and start another season a few months later? No way would the union agree to that.
3) East coast players are going to be away from home for several months under your proposal.
There are probably other reasons but those are a few that I came up with off the top of my heard.
“Yes, a guy that gets hurt in December might miss some time in 2021 but we aren’t talking THAT big of a time separation from a guy getting hurt in Oct.”
We’re talking potentially 3 months or about half of a baseball season. That’s a huge difference.
I guess I disagree that any of those are insurmountable issues. Teams and players make money when players play baseball. I think they’ll figure it out.
“I guess I disagree that any of those are insurmountable issues.”
You’ll make a great management representative someday.
“I think they’ll figure it out.”
Of course they’ll figure something out. But it won’t be anything even close to what you proposed. Because…once again, there’s just no way the union would ever agree to something like that.
Beware: anybody with realistic ideas about the reality of what will happen will be down voted. I’ve changed my mind- they’ll play the full 162, plus all star game, plus expanded playoffs and a traveling barnstorming tour across the word for the champions.
FWIW, I’m not downvoting your comments. I absolutely think it is a real possibility that the entire season is cancelled for the very reasons you’ve given. I actually think that is more likely than a Memorial Day start. However we are all guessing at a very uncertain future. Could be another 8 weeks and we’re good to go. Could be 6 months of this. China seems to have gotten it under control in about 3 months but they are a totalitarian society which probably helped enforce the lockdown in a way that is never going to happen here.
I guess I’m hoping for a July 1st start but realistic enough to acknowledge that it could be worse than that.
I recommend you ignore the upvote/downvote. Say your piece and let everyone absorb it. If they want to boo you, who cares.
That said, I am fairly certain that if the MLB thinks they can salvage anything this year they will try to do so, even if only as a morale boost for the country. It may not look like a normal baseball season in the end, but they will try something if at all possible.
I didn’t downvote your initial comment, but your subsequent insistence that the MLB won’t even bother trying much, especially if they are allowed by say July 1, which you suggested starting w/ your 2nd comment.
IF all you’re saying is you don’t think MLB will be allowed even by July 1, that’s another story and certainly very possible. But to insist (repeatedly) MLB won’t bother trying even if they’re actually allowed?
And of course, this last comment is just plain whiny…
People downvote because they disagree. There’s no personal attacks involved. It’s just a way of agreeing or disagreeing without having to create an account and leave a comment. There’s no running tally of the cumulative upvotes someone has earned, and there aren’t any penalties for being downvoted, so I wouldn’t worry about it too much.
Everything I have read in this blog is pure speculation and based on nothing more than hot air.I will add some more of that guesswork. We do know that the Center for Disease Control(CDC) just put out a directive asking for no groups of 50 or more for the next eight weeks. That brings the situation to Memorial Day and there is no way to know what the state of the pandemic will be at that time. The best case scenario, if things go very, very well, might be a shortened schedule, perhaps only playing teams in your division, beginning possibly on July 4th with a huge national ceremony showing that baseball, this truly American game, can help lead this country out of this morass.
If it gets delayed for a significant amount of time (which seems likely) hope baseball gets weird with it. Draw match ups out of a hat (you could even televise the drawing) and hold a march madness style tournament with all 30 teams.
I agree. How about a completely balanced schedule – everyone plays out of division 3 times, and division 5 times (3/2 home/away series). Add in double headers to that to ease travel and make it robotic and efficient. All October games will be in Southern cities/domes, and the ALCS/NLCS/WS series auctioned to Miami/Arizona/Dallas.
“94?” – Paul Manafort
Well, it’s now officially mid-May at the earliest – announcement just came out.
From a fantasy baseball perspective, do you think that the shortened season will level the playing field from a top tier pitching perspective? I feel like in theory, there will be less variance in innings pitched for the season, which may lessen the importance of getting an elite arm early in a draft, since the majority of pitchers who may have had an innings limit, won’t have one.
Surely the shortened seasons in 1918-1919 had to do with the flu rather than the war.
For fantasy purposes, does a shortened season suggest taking more elite pitching early, or is it a wash as to a typical hitting/pitching split?
Based on reports from the meeting with Manfred today, owners are prepared for a mid July start date at the earliest. I think the most likely outcome is something along those lines, with there being a better chance of no games at all then starting prior to late June. I have heard some interesting ideas, like 5 inning doubleheaders daily.
It hasn’t been definitively determined yet, but the coronavirus may be more sensitive to high temperatures, which would make playing during the warmer months safer. For this reason, I don’t think extending the season deep into the fall is a good plan because there’s a good chance the virus returns more fervently when the weather cools down. One possibility is a major league regular season that runs from June through August, with the postseason in September.
To much analyzing for this subject. It’s called a Short Season where obviously games wont be able to be made up. I find it funny and interesting that people still think there will be a full season. Let’s crunch this and crunch that.. don’t get me wrong I enjoy the enthusiasm but let’s use some common sense over that optimism of numbers and days crunching to create an entire season. Yes it’s depressing but writing nonsense hypotheticals aren’t going to do any good
I’ll put the over under at August 1st. Here in Spain they have closed the border for one month and that seems optimistic. If even Trump is saying that people are talking about July or August…
Baseball is my only (sports) love. I live it 24/7/52. It is where I go for comfort and distraction.
The MLB 2020 season is toast. It’s not going to happen in any format, and it’s time to try to wrap our collective heads around this thought AND what it suggests about other, more critical aspects of our lives.
The new reality is that MLB itself is now in great danger…not only for this year but for all future years as well.
Do your part. If you’re a millennial, try to get your cohort to tune in and drop out. Every day counts…
Sincerely,
MLB Fanman (aka Debbie Downer..)
100% spot on
Since the extension of the delay, I have been eyeballing an even 100 starting early June or 81 starting by mid-July, without extending RS more than two weeks for weather hedging. Even 100 and 81 well of course it’s half.
It’s wishful thinking to believe we can start before June 1 IMO. Even June 15 is going to be difficult.
So two series against in-division opponents (6 games x 4 teams) = 24. One series against out-of-division opponents: (3 games x 10 teams) = 30. Total 54. That’s the minimum, and there are probably a lot of people who don’t think a season that short should be played at all.
So double it: four series against in-division opponents and two series (home and away) against out of division opponents. That’s 108 games. And here’s the thing: that’s probably the most that can realistically be played, starting sometime after Memorial Day and pushing the end date out a bit without a lot of problematic double-headers.
I actually think Opening Day is going to be in June or the beginning of July (would be a nice way to celebrate the 4th, right?) and the season is going to be 81 games, exactly half, or something like 72.
Would it be better to cancel All-star Week and replace it with regular season games? I’d prefer that, but maybe some people like the All-star Game more than I do.