Ticket Refund Plans Still Waiting, Employee Pay Through May, Happ’s Hot Start, and Other Cubs Bullets

It was Teacher Day for Daddy, so I am partially exhausted even as I start these Bullets close to mid-day. God bless teachers.

  • We’re well into what would have been the regular season and teams are still figuring out how they’re going to handle ticket refunds for “postponed” games, as this LA Times piece discusses in the context of the Dodgers. Right now, MLB’s position is that games have been postponed, not cancelled. Not yet, anyway. So they’re still part of the league’s normal policy for postponed games, and the league has told teams to hold tight on issuing refunds or credits for the time being.
  • While I can understand the position from a cashflow perspective, it’s going to get harder and harder to defend as the would-have-been season goes on, and everyone knows quite clearly that these lost games are not simply going to be “made up” later in the year (which, by the way, has never been a fan-friendly rainout policy anyway). I would anticipate some uniform guidance coming sooner rather than later, perhaps tied to whatever plan MLB starts rolling out for a resumed season, if that’s going to be possible (and even then, it will almost certainly not involve a full crowd). Until then, unfortunately, ticket-holders are simply on the hook for the interest-free loan they’ve made to teams.
  • For their part, the Cubs have reached out to fans to note the league’s position:
  • Meanwhile, for league and team employees, it looks like more and more are targeting payments through May 31 before having to review how much longer that can continue:
  • If I had to guess, MLB is hoping to at least know what kind of 2020 plan will or will not be possible by the end of May (not that things will START by then, mind you – just know what might be possible, so that financial plans after that point will be more clear).
  • RIP to the former Cubs manager and GM:
  • Ian Happ gave up 20 runs before he figured out how to handle MLB The Show, so he lost his opening game last night, but then went on to win the next three:
  • The extreme shift has been around for a long time:
  • Missing stuff like this – dude would’ve been continuing his breaking right now:
  • Perusing newly-released items at Amazon today. #ad
  • Games on Marquee this week:
  • Happy Birthday to Greg Maddux:
  • https://twitter.com/PitchingNinja/status/1250032534680993793

  • I believe it:
  • written by

    Brett Taylor is the Lead Cubs Writer at Bleacher Nation, and you can find him on Twitter at @BleacherNation and on LinkedIn here. Brett is also the founder of Bleacher Nation, which opened up shop in 2008 as an independent blog about the Chicago Cubs. Later growing to incorporate coverage of other Chicago sports, Bleacher Nation is now one of the largest regional sports blogs on the web.

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