Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports
The early murmurs from the players’ union are not promising about a deal, and there will be contentious rounds of debate that will help decide whether baseball will return to major league fields this year.
Though there are so many hurdles to clear, the race toward a possible Opening Day has begun, and the Giants manager is excited.
“Really, really optimistic about the possibility of playing baseball this summer,” Gabe Kapler said on KNBR on Monday after the owners submitted a proposal to the Players Association for beginning a roughly 82-game season in July.
Owners are offering a 50-50 revenue split for a pact that the players already thought was settled, when the two agreed upon ramifications in late March from the coronavirus pandemic. The money will have to be settled, as will the safety concerns and about 1,000 other off-field issues, as well as a few on-field ones. Extra innings likely will be tweaked and the owners have proposed a universal DH for the season.
“We’ve had lots of discussions about [the possibilities] internally,” Kapler said. “The way we think about it is we need to be ready for every possible outcome, for several different rule changes, for training in home cities or in spring training sites and not to get too caught up in what’s going to happen in preparing for that, rather for every possible outcome.”
To cut down on travel, teams would be limited to playing opponents in their own division and the corresponding division in the other league. So, the Giants would have frequent matchups against AL West teams.
They’re getting ready for it.
“As a coaching staff we have been simulating games, playing those games against the teams that we thought it was most likely that we would play against,” Kapler said. “Spent a lot of time on the Dodgers, spent a lot of time on the Diamondbacks, obviously preparing for the Padres, etc. We just changed our approach and our game plan. We’re definitely going to be preparing for the A’s. We’re definitely going to be preparing for the Angels and the Mariners and more interleague play.”
More Bay Bridge series, and much more Mike Trout.