NEWSLETTER
Something that Gordon Wittenmyer just tweeted out from Cardinals manager Mike Shildt really caught my eye for the POTENTIAL implications.
Cards manager Mike Shildt says conversations with his front office lead him to believe that MLB will announce a spring and season timeline just after first of the year.
— Gordon Wittenmyer (@GDubCub) December 18, 2020
Lotta reactions to a short bit like that …
There is already an announced Spring Training and regular season schedule, so there is no timeline to announce unless it is an altered timeline. To be sure, everyone is expecting some kind of alteration to the timeline at this point, but it’s also the case that there is no word that the players and the league have been talking about dates and length of season yet, even if they should be.
So, then, is this a clue that those talks HAVE taken place? That’d be a shock, since those talks will likely also have to include rules issues and expanded playoffs. Or is the Cardinals front office simply optimistic? Or maybe just realistic, given that players have to know the spring timeline very soon after the first of the year since many players start heading to spring sites then?
Is there increasing confidence at the league level about how the vaccine rollout is going/projects to go, such that they suddenly now feel good about playing 162 games (it’s just a matter of when)? Because if it’s going to be a full 162-game season, then the players are pretty much going to be fine with any timeline. Their priority, understandably, is getting in a full season and/or getting full pay.
IF Shildt was picking up this sense correctly, and IF the front office was speaking from a place of information, and IF MLB has confidence about this or that, then MAYBE this is a major reveal. And MAYBE we’ll get a really awesome announcement that everything is good to go on dates X, Y, and Z after the first of the year. That’d be very surprising to me, though.
