Hello, Sports.
Since March 12th, the sports world has been in a standstill due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Here’s how each league prepares to return to play.
On June 17, the Premier League returned to finish out the remainder of its season, without fans. This is similar to other soccer leagues, including the Bundesliga, La Liga, and South Korea’s K League. Social distancing and health and safety have been and will continue to be enforced. Liverpool has been named the winner of the season, though the rest of the season will finish as normal. Korea’s and Taiwan’s baseball leagues have restarted play many weeks ago, with their own health and safety protocol in place.
On July 5, Formula One will restart in Austria, with a second race in Austria on July 12. Round 3 will fall on July 19 and will be in Hungary, with Rounds 4 & 5 in Great Britain, on August 2 and 9. Spain (August 16), Belgium (August 30), and Italy (September 6) round out the last three (7–9) Rounds of races in Europe.
On July 8, Major League Soccer (commonly referred to as MLS) will be kicking off the “MLS is Back Tournament”, to be played until August 11th, with all games being played at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. On July 8, the Group Stage presented by Heineken begins On July 25–28 Knockout Stage presented by Audi (Round of 16) begins. The Quarterfinals will take place from July 30-August 1, with the Semifinals taking place from August 5–6 and August 11 being the Final. Teams are split up into six groups (A-F) and grouped by conference. More information about the bracket can be found here. The league will also be implementing health, safety, and medical protocols developed by MLS’s medical department. The protocols are published by MLS and can be found here.
On July 10, National Hockey League training camps will open, in Phase III of the League’s return to Play Plan. There is no set length of time for Phase III and for training camp. Formal resumption of play is to follow in Phase IV. Play will resume with play-in games for 24 teams, the top 12 in each Conference on the basis of points percentage at the pause. In that format, the highest remaining seed in each conference will take on the lowest remaining seed. This means that the top four seeds (determined by points percentage) in the East would be the Boston Bruins, Tampa Bay Lightning, Washington Capitals and Philadelphia Flyers. The top four teams in the West would be the St. Louis Blues, Colorado Avalanche, Vegas Golden Knights and Dallas Stars. Those eight teams will face off in a Round Robin in order to determine seeding for the First Round. (CBSSports.com)
July 23–34: Major League Baseball will start its modified 60-game season on July 23rd with rumors of Yankees vs Nationals in primetime, pitting newly acquired Yankees ace Gerrit Cole against the defending World Series Champion Nationals following weeks of negotiations between the Players’ Union and the League. Each team will have a roster of up to 30 players, with a minimum of 25. Two weeks later, those rosters will be trimmed to 28, then to 26 two weeks after that. Once teams are limited to a 26-man roster, they will be permitted to add a 27th player for doubleheaders. There will be no limitation on the number of pitchers allowed on an active roster this season. Today at 4 p.m. ET marks the first major roster deadline for all 30 teams, which must submit their 60-man Player Pool — that is, the group of players who will be able to play for them this season. According to the league’s Operating Manual, all players on a 40-man roster “that the Club anticipates participating” during the season will be part of the Player Pool, while the rest will be made up of non-40-man roster players under contract. Any 40-man-roster players who are not included in a Player Pool (for example, maybe a prospect who isn’t deemed ready for the Majors) will still be paid during the season.
No team will be allowed to exceed the limit of 60 players in its Player Pool at any time during Spring Training 2.0 or the regular season. While 30 players will make up the initial Opening Day roster for each team, the other 30 will remain at an Alternate Training Site, which is likely to be a ballpark of one of the club’s nearby Minor League affiliates. For instance, the Pirates announced that their alternate site will be at their Double-A affiliate in Altoona, Pa.
Non-40-man-roster players may be removed by trade, release, placement on the COVID-19 related injured list, or placement on the suspended list (by the club), military, voluntarily retired, restricted, disqualified or ineligible lists. Any injured non-40-man-roster players will continue to count against the team’s Player Pool unless they are removed through one of the aforementioned transactions. Although not every player in an organization can be dealt in 2020. The Trade Deadline this season has been moved from July 31 to Aug. 31, but unlike years past, teams will be limited in which players they can deal. Only the 60 players in a team’s Player Pool will be able to be traded, limiting the number of Minor League players who will be moved this summer.
Each team will be permitted a three-player Taxi Squad for every road trip, giving them immediate options to replace an injured or COVID-19 infected player. The players will come from the 60-man Player Pool, but the goal of bringing them on the trip is to avoid putting a player on a commercial flight if an injury occurs. The Taxi Squad must feature at least one catcher, while the other two players can be either pitchers or position players. One executive said he expects most teams to carry a pitcher, a utility player and a catcher, though some could opt to bring two pitchers and a catcher. These three players will be permitted to work out with the team on the road, while the catcher will also be allowed to serve as a bullpen catcher. At the end of the road trip, Taxi Squad players will return to the team’s Alternate Training Site, though the catcher will be permitted to stay with the team as a bullpen catcher for home games. Taxi Squad players will not be paid MLB salary or accrue service time, but they will receive the Major League allowance of $108.50 per day along with their Minor League salary.
Is the “Nashville plan” going to become a reality? There has been discussion of a plan that would involve sending 40–60 unsigned free agents — mostly players who played at Triple-A or in the Majors last season — to Nashville, Tenn., where they would make up a pair of teams that could serve as a pool of emergency call ups for the 30 MLB teams. The Nashville Sounds — the Rangers’ Triple-A affiliate — would host the group. Games in Nashville could be played between the free-agent teams every Thursday through Sunday beginning around the same time as MLB’s Opening Day. More information on the Major League Baseball season can be found here.
On July 24, the Womens’ National Basketball Association is projected to start a 22-game regular season at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida. The regular season will be followed by a traditional WNBA Postseason. Numerous stars have decided to back out of the season, including Rebecca Allen, Liberty (story), Natasha Cloud, Mystics (story); and Tiffany Hayes, Dream (story). As the WNBA noted in their return to play statement writes, “The WNBA 2020 season will include a devoted platform led by the players that will aim to support and strengthen both the league and teams’ reach and impact on social justice matters. As recently announced, this began with the WNBA making donations from sales of its “Bigger Than Ball” women’s empowerment merchandise to the Equal Justice Initiative.”
On July 25, the Premier Lacrosse League begins its Championship Series tournament at Zions Bank Stadium in Herriman, Utah. The tournament will be played without fans and players and support staff will be quarantined. According to their press release, “all seven PLL clubs will be accommodated for room and board, training and competition at the facilities’ numerous playing fields.” The PLL has also announced that [their] “COVID-19 Medical Committee has worked constantly with public health organizations over the last three months to develop protocols and procedures to ensure safety for all traveling parties. The Committee, consisting of multiple physicians and infectious disease experts, requires that PLL Championship Series participants self-quarantine for two weeks prior to travel and be tested both before and immediately upon arrival onsite. Subsequently, all parties will be subject to regular testing and symptom monitoring throughout the duration of their stay at Real Salt Lake Training Academy.” The league’s seven teams will compete in a fourteen-game group play format to determine seeding for the following week’s single-elimination tournament. More information about the PLL Championship Series can be found here.
The National Basketball Association projected to restart on July 30 at ESPN’s Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando, Florida, with The Finals ending no later than October 13. The venues for all games will be inside the Arena, Field House and Visa Athletic Center. A total of 22 teams will return to play. In the Eastern Conference, the Milwaukee Bucks, Toronto Raptors, Boston Celtics, Miami Heat, Indiana Pacers, Philadelphia 76ers, Brooklyn Nets, Orlando Magic, and Washington Wizards will compete for playoff spots. In the Western Conference, the Los Angeles Lakers, Los Angeles Clippers, Denver Nuggets, Utah Jazz, Oklahoma City Thunder, Houston Rockets, Dallas Mavericks, Memphis Grizzlies, Portland Trail Blazers, New Orleans Pelicans, Sacramento Kings, San Antonio Spurs, and Phoenix Suns will play to finish off the 2019–20 NBA season and playoffs. Seeding games are the eight remaining games each returning team will play before the playoffs begin. The games were selected from a team’s remaining regular-season matchups. The first round begins August 17. The conference semifinals begin August 31. The conference finals begin September 15. The NBA Finals begin September 30. According to the league, if the team with the eighth-best record in its conference is more than four games ahead of the team with the ninth-best record in the same conference, no play-in tournament will be necessary. The final playoff berth will simply go to the team with the eighth best record (regular-season games + seeding games). But if the team with the eighth-best record in its conference is four games or fewer ahead of the team with the ninth-best record in the same conference, then we’ll have a battle for the final spot between those two teams. The tournament will basically be a best-of-two series — where the №9 seed will have to win two head-to-head matchups to take over the №8 spot. More information about the NBA’s comeback can be found here.
Nothing has yet been decided about the National Football League or any other NCAA Fall Season sports.
