If you’re like me, you’re skeptical that MLB will be able to pull off even a shortened season without having some kind of negative impact from the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, if you’re like me, you’re absolutely thrilled that we’re going to be watching real baseball games later this week.
Such are the times we are living in. What can I say, it’s complicated.
Further complicating matters is the fact that this season is going to be like none other, and if you are an MLB historian and a purist who likes to gauge performances from one year to the next, this season could very well drive you nuts.
(You can discuss this on the BSL Board here.)
The first oddity that leaps to mind for me, other than the fact that there won’t be any fans in the stands, is the schedule. Each team will play 40 games within its division and 20 more interleague contests against the corresponding division from the other league (AL East vs. NL East, etc.). That figures to make for yet another rough season for the Orioles, having to play the bulk of their games against teams like the Yankees, Rays, Blue Jays, Braves and your World Series champion Nationals (more on them in a bit).
But the schedule is just the start. We’re also going to see some statistical weirdness that you just can’t avoid with a 60-game season. Take for instance, pitcher wins. Now, I know we don’t really care about pitcher wins anymore — something I am completely on board with — but it’s nonetheless going to look weird to see the league leader come away with, what, six? Five?
(Speaking of pitchers, Max Scherzer could have tied Tom Seaver with a record ninth consecutive 200-strikeout season this year. That’s not going to happen now unless he can somehow squeeze out 12 starts and whiff about 17 guys each time out. Good luck with that.)
As long as we’re talking about league leaders, let’s talk about home runs for a moment. If Pete Alonso can produce a second-straight 50-homer season, that would quite possibly be the most amazing feat in MLB history, and also a sign of a new and horrifying pandemic – dumb pitching.
The record for home runs in a 60-game stretch within a season is 35, by Barry Bonds in 2001. Most likely, your league leader this year will come in somewhere in the late-teens/low-20s, maybe high-20s if somebody gets out to a hot start. That puts you in the territory of 1981, a strike-shortened season that saw the quartet of Tony Armas, Dwight Evans, Bobby Grich, and the O’s Eddie Murray tie for the AL lead with 22 bombs each (Mike Schmidt led the NL with 31).
These are all individual items that will be weird — and I would assert, fun – to watch. But what about teams? Now we must turn our attention to the Nationals, who as you may recall, were the World Series champions of our most recent baseball season, so long ago now.
The Nationals had an amazing season and were truly dominant down the stretch and into the playoffs. But they were even more amazing due to the fact that they basically punted on the first third of the season. Entering June of 2019, the Nats were 24-33 and nine games out of first place. Folks were calling for the head of manager Dave Martinez, including the Washington Post’s Thomas Boswell, who wrote that the manager was a good man, but out of his depth.
“What they need – someone who can build a decent bullpen out of scrap (feel free to erase the “s”) and someone who can put the fear of a wrathful deity into anyone who screws up the fundamentals – isn’t what he has,” Boswell wrote. Oops.
Obviously the Nats will not be going anywhere if they start the 60-game season 24-33. But what will be interesting to watch is what happens if a good team plays .421 ball through the first third of the season. Because we’re going to be in a situation more akin to what goes on in the NFL, where an 0-2 start leads the planet’s radio mouths to start yammering about must-win games. The urgency will be heightened.
And on the positive side of things, what happens if a not-so-good team starts the season by winning four of its first five games (as your 2019 Orioles did), and then manages to play .500 ball for another week beyond that (as they did not)?
“When I was looking ahead to the season, this is how I was hoping we would play,” O’s manager Brandon Hyde said after the O’s had won their fourth straight game.
That quote is adorable in retrospect, but if you think about a similar start, but with only 55 games left to play, it has an entirely different context, an entirely different feel.
Things could get interesting in a hurry, to say the least, in 2020. It’s going to be a weird season, and difficult to compare the accomplishments of teams and players to any other year. But that’s OK. There is going to be some baseball, and that is something to celebrate.
You can scoff at the numbers. You can tag each noteworthy happening with a mental asterisk if you like. I don’t really care. All I know is that when the Nats’ Scherzer squares off against the Yankees’ Gerrit Cole on Thursday, followed by the Giants vs. the Dodgers later in the evening, I’ll be watching.
I’ll be embracing the weird, and I think you should, too. After all, with the continuing issues presented by COVID-19, we don’t even know for sure that we’ll be able to get this entire season in. It’s hardly guaranteed. So enjoy it while you can.
Orioles Analyst
Bob Harkins is a veteran journalist who has worked as a writer, editor and producer for numerous outlets, including 13 years at NBCSports.com. He is also the creator of the Razed Sports documentary podcast and the founder of Story Hangar, a network of documentary podcasters.