What the 2020 Season Will Look Like: Crowdsource Results Round 4

In what is now the fourth time readers have answered questions regarding their expectations for the season, respondents have bounced back and forth a bit on the central question of whether there will be baseball this year. I’d like to thank our readers for their continued participation, as we again received over 1,000 responses to nearly every question. As for the return of baseball this year, readers were very optimistic this round.

Coming in at nearly 72% of responses, last week elicited the highest percentage of “Yes” votes so far, after a huge drop-off in confidence in the results from a couple weeks ago:

With that optimism comes an increase in those expecting roughly half a season of games, though nearly everyone who expects baseball has given up hope of more than 100 games:

Here’s how the voting has progressed over time:

As for when the season might begin, there is now near a consensus:

Every poll leading up to this had July as the frontrunner, but at about 40% of the responses. Now, nearly 90% of the responses believe a season either will not start at all or that it will start in July.

And MLB’s preference to play at least some games in home stadiums seems to have shifted responses about whether regular season games would be played in spring training parks:

These results are consistent with the results from the first poll in late March, though the last two rounds of polling had expectations of games at spring training sites at 60%-65%.

In terms of regular season games, it looks like everybody who thinks there will be a season believes at least some of the games will be played without fans:

Comparing the poll above to to the one estimating the number of games, not everybody thinks the full season will be played without fans, but that’s the case for the majority.

When it comes to playoff structure, the standard playoffs came in at around 40% like it has every time, though “More rounds/teams” jumps up a bit from the 29% it received last round, but we aren’t talking about a major difference:

Finally, as to the season’s end, we see the two November options have moved up about 5% each, basically taking a cut from the “No season” option, which has moved down a lot since the last round of polling:

A lot has already happened since the last round of voting and there’s the potential for significant movement toward (or away from) a season in the next week. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see more movement in the next round of answers.

Thanks again for your time.