On Thursday, the Red Sox enjoyed their only scheduled day off of spring training.
Starting Friday, they -- and the other 29 teams -- will have more time off than they could have ever imagined.
Joining the NBA and NHL, Major League Baseball announced Thursday afternoon that spring training was suspended as of 4 p.m. and the start of the regular season -- slated to begin in exactly two weeks -- would be delayed by at least two weeks "due to the national emergency created by the coronavirus pandemic.''
The Red Sox had been scheduled to begin the regular season on March 26 in Toronto with a four-game series against the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre. They were next scheduled to travel to Baltimore for a three-game series (March 30-April 1) before returning to Fenway for their scheduled home opener against the Chicago White Sox on April 2, the first game of a three-game series. They were then set to host the Tampa Bay Rays for three games April 6-8 before departing for a seven-game road trip to the West Coast.
MLB said it was "preparing a variety of contingency plans regarding the 2020 regular season schedule. MLB will announce the effects on the schedule at an appropriate time and will remain flexible as events warrant, with the hope of resuming normal operations as soon as possible.''
This will mark the first time since 1995 that the MLB season won't begin on time. In 1995, the sport was still in the midst of a work stoppage that began the previous August and forced the cancellation of the 1994 World Series. In February of 1995, with the Players Association on strike, owners invited replacement players to camp.
But on April 2, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against the owners, returning the players to work for a delayed start to a modified 144-game season. MLB also saw the start of the 1972 season delayed, with 86 games lost. Remarkably, MLB did not adjust the schedule to ensure that all teams played the same number of games, and the Red Sox, having finished 85-70, finished a half-game behind the Detroit Tigers in the A.L. East, having played one fewer game.
The cessation of spring training and the cancellation of the first two weeks of the regular season comes as a number of teams in areas hit hardest by the outbreak -- Seattle and both Bay Area teams, to name two -- were exploring alternate sites for early-season games. Government directives in both the state of Washington and in the Oakland-San Francisco metro area outlawed large gatherings due to the pandemic.
MLB has the benefit of at least some time to adjust its schedule, while the NBA and NHL have been interrupted just as their regular seasons head for the final stretch and the playoffs loom.
Still, baseball faces a number of questions for which there are no easy answers. Among them:
- What happens to players for the time being?