Texas Rangers: Possible Changes to the 2020 Season Caused By COVID-19

As we have finally reached the originally scheduled Opening Week for baseball, we will take a look at possibilities of when the Texas Rangers will actually get to play their Opening Day at some point.

With all of the craziness that has gone on due to COVID-19 around the world, the Texas Rangers will likely not start the inaugural season at Globe Life Field until maybe late-May to June, if the virus eventually dies down. This article is all off of speculation of what has been said for when the season will start, as readers should look for updates on the virus provided by the WHO for anything official on the virus.

Going off of speculation, if the sports world were to be able to resume, say in May, MLB would then likely have two to three weeks for a mini Spring Training in order to get players back in the swing of things. If that were to happen, and the season starts in late May to early June, there are some options that the MLB can do to fix the schedule for the season, as they would likely spend the first few days of spring training working to fix issues with the schedule to get it to around 100 games.

Regular Season Changes

A scenario that I could for sure see playing out would be the MLB at least starting the season with a mandate saying that teams are not allowed to play games with fans in attendance, in order to maintain player and fan safety. It would be really weird to see games without fans, especially the inaugural game for the Texas Rangers at Globe Life Field, but who knows. It would also be a shame to see the shame tour for the Houston Astros fade away as a result as well.

If MLB did cut the season to around 100 games, then the first games to be cut from schedules would likely be inter-league games, as the Texas Rangers have 20 on their 2020 schedule, which would then drop them to 142 games.

The next step would be to cut the number of American League games from outside the division down. My guess would be to make every series from 7 games to 4, and do two home and two away, and make them on weekdays. That would cut 30 more games off of the schedule, and drop it to 112 total games.

112 games would probably be doable, but if the MLB prefers to go with 100 exactly, they could just simply cut divisional three game series’ for each team, then split a four game series into a pair of two game series to even out the home-away for within the division.

It is for sure going to be a very curious process to follow, as something like what we are dealing with right now is unprecedented, and there is not really a great way to  make the schedules for the 30 teams.

Playoff Changes

Then the next problem for the MLB would be for playoffs. There are a few routes that they can go for this…

The first would be that the MLB could just keep with the playoff format that they have been using since 2012, where five teams from each League make it. With there being a 62 game shortage in this scenario, it does not seem very likely that the MLB will continue to use this format for the 2020 season.

A more likely scenario could be that the MLB would expand the playoffs to eight teams from each League, and do things similar to the NBA in that the first round is a best of three, second round being a best of five, then the standard seven game series for the Championship rounds and the World Series.

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An even wackier scenario would be that the COVID-19 issues continue on into the summer, and the season does not start until like July. In this situation, I could see MLB just doing games that are within divisions, and then the playoffs would be something like where most of the teams get in. A fun scenario would be the seventh to tenth teams in the Leagues playing each other in one game eliminators to make it to play the one and two teams (similar to how the Big 12 runs their basketball tournament).

On a lighter note: Please enjoy this Adrian Beltre video posted by the Texas Rangers to help brighten your day!

This situation is going to be very interesting to watch play out as time passes. Hopefully all of you Sport DFW readers and Texas Rangers fans take the proper precautions, and stay safe and indoors, and we get through this craziness quickly so we can get to see some baseball in the new Globe Life Field!

• Published on 03/23/2020 at 12:01 PM
• Last updated at 03/23/2020 at 08:20 AM