The Major League Baseball sent a memo to the minor league teams on Monday, informing them that the 2021 minor league season in Double-A and Class A levels will be postponed.
MLB told teams in the minor leagues that spring training for Double-A and Class A players will not begin until MLB and Triple-A players have left spring training. The delay will allow more social distance during a time when the coronavirus pandemic continues to affect the world.
Even if the MLB spring training starts on time, many players in the minor leagues will not report to spring training until late March or early April.
Since players in the minor leagues usually spend three or four weeks training in the spring, the delay would push the start of those leagues into May if MLB training works on their regular schedule.
In addition, the memo told teams in the minor leagues to expect their schedules to run until October 3, an entire month after regular season games normally ended in early September. It is also expected that there will be no secondary league playoffs in 2021. With a delayed start, the playoff dates will be changed to more dates for all teams.
Such a move was expected and openly speculated around the minor leagues for weeks, but the memo made the expected news official.
The move could mean that Triple-A teams can be set to play on a somewhat normal schedule with an early April date, but there are a number of issues that can prevent this from happening.
Most notably, Triple-A schedules will depend on whether MLB teams still operate in “bubbles” with strictly controlled limited access. While MLB teams travel on charter flights, Triple-A teams travel on commercial flights. If there are concerns about the risk of Covid-19 transmission on these flights, the MLB may revert to the alternate site model early in the season until coronavirus vaccines are more widely distributed and outbreaks across the country are reduced.
The news was received by many in the minor leagues as more of a relief than a concern. The teams want their 2021 schedules, but as coronavirus cases continue to increase across the country, Class A, Double-A and Triple-A operators told Baseball America that they would prefer to start the season later than normal and anticipate the end of the season later as well.
The preferred start dates depend somewhat on local conditions and the restrictions that teams will face because of the coronavirus. Some teams could not play now due to meeting restrictions in their cities and states. The hope is that the pandemic has improved at the beginning of the season, but there are many unknowns.
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All 120 teams in the minor leagues face a December 18 deadline issued by the MLB, where the MLB asks teams to sign an NDA and waive their right to sue.
Some operators said they would like to wait until the end of May or Memorial Day weekend to start their seasons, figuring that the spread of the vaccine and the warmer weather would give them a better chance of playing in front of the crowd. Others said they would prefer a start date in early May, but no one Baseball America spoke to wanted to start in early April.
The 120 teams that the MLB has invited to be part of its new minor league system have also not received their professional development licenses. Once they do, they will have 30 days to decide whether to sign. Schedules will not be released until the MLB has all the PDLs signed in a league, which means it is possible that the 2021 schedules will not be released until February.
As soon as they receive their schedules, the teams will have something more concrete to launch when selling tickets and sponsorships. A later start date gives teams the necessary leeway. Typically, the teams announced next year’s schedule in August of the previous year.
Teams in the minor leagues have also learned that the MLB is planning to adopt a schedule of six days off and one day off for 2021, according to which the leagues would have a defined day off once a week. This change would significantly reduce travel – for Triple-A teams, moving from three- and four-day trips to six days could cut air travel costs by almost half. Teams hosted a team for six days or stayed on the road in one location for six days, then had a day off a week to travel before playing a six-game pass against the next opponent.
This is a problem that everyone seems happy about. For players, having one day off per week – even with a few trips – is much better from the point of view of quality of life than having one day off per month on the old system. It will also cut your travels.
For operators, this system guarantees an equitable distribution of weekends among all teams, if the teams are at home one week and on the road the next. It also ensures that teams will have homestands of reasonable length.