Tampa Bay Rays News: Major League Baseball rejects the union’s proposal

Tampa Bay Rays News: MLB Rejects Players Association’s Proposal

If Tampa Bay Rays fans were hoping for good news about the 2020 MLB season getting underway, you’re going to have to wait a little bit longer. The 2020 season was originally scheduled to commence on March 26 but was postponed, in unison with every other professional sports league, due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Editor’s Note: Don’t fret, we predicted this would happen when the players’ proposal was first released. Ultimately, we believe there will be an agreement reached soon. To read more about our take on why the league and the union are agreeing on the most important issues, click the link below.

Wednesday afternoon Major League Baseball turned down a proposal put forth on Sunday from the Player’s Association that would have seen a 114-game season in addition to an expanded playoff format taking place from June 30 – October 31 according to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. This proposal also would have allowed players to earn a prorated salary without any pay cuts in proportion to the number of games played.

Jeff Passan of ESPN reported earlier in the week that if the two sides were not able to come to an agreement, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred would force a shorter season with prorated salaries and that the season would be in the 50-60 game range as opposed to the Player’s Associations desired 114-game season.

In my opinion, and I think a lot of people would agree, I just want to see Major League Baseball be played this season. If it’s a 50 game season, every game will feel like an important one. One hot streak by a team could propel them towards the postseason, while on the other hand one bad week could make for a tough deficit to bounce back from in the standings.

Sure there’ll be an asterisk next to the 2020 season if it shakes out that way, but it’ll still be an exciting and wild ride.