St. Louis Cardinals News: MLB hopes to have a plan by end of May

We have heard many ideas about what the 2020 season may look like for the St. Louis Cardinals but the MLB hopes to have a plan within a month.

The uncertainty surrounding the St. Louis Cardinals’ 2020 season is getting old. I don’t think I’m alone when I say that, but an end may be on the horizon.

In a letter last week, commissioner Rob Manfred said, “While I fully anticipate that baseball will resume this season, it is very difficult to predict with any accuracy the timeline for the resumption of our season.” The confidence that the season will return is great to see, but so far the league has had a lot of ideas that all have their own downfalls and benefits.

Jeff Passan of ESPN congregated all the most recent news about the MLB season here but included one interesting quote. Most teams have guaranteed their employees’ pay until the end of May. While some have extended that to June, Passan writes that that date is “no accident.” Furthermore, “the end of May isn’t a drop-dead point to have a plan in place, sources said, as much as it’s a reasonable and logical one.”

If there is a plan in place for what the 2020 season could look like, we could reasonably have baseball again by the end of June or July. Passan lays it out well, “Finalize a plan in May. Hash out an agreement with the players by the end of the month or early June. Give players a week to arrive at designated spring training locations. Prepare for three weeks. Start the season in July. Play around an 80- to 100-game season in July, August, September and October. Hold an expanded playoff at warm-weather, neutral sites in November.”

That sounds dandy to me.

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If we have new baseball news by the first week of June, even better.

There are obviously questions as to what the league will do about testing and player safety, but that’s where they can wait and see how things go as the country opens up.

25 miles to the east of Auburn, Alabama (my current location), the state of Georgia has already re-opened gyms, hair salons, and other businesses and are sort of serving as a test case to how well re-opening will work. I stand in the camp that the state’s decision was not intelligent, but that is not what we are here to discuss.

If states begin to re-open and things aren’t crashing back into the stone ages, the MLB will definitely have an easier time returning.

Having a plan in place is a start, executing it may be a bigger issue. It’s in everyone’s best interest for the league to come back but do so safely. It will be difficult, concessions will be made, but hopefully we get baseball again by the All-Star break.