The 2020 MLB schedule has arrived. Major League Baseball revealed the 60 game schedule on Monday night during a live stream on the MLB Network. The current COVID-19 pandemic has forced MLB to play a shorter season: 60 games will be tied for MLB’s shorter season with the 1877 campaign, although the postseason will remain the standard 10-team format.
To reduce travel between the pandemic, the 30 clubs will play 40 games against their division rivals plus 20 total games against the corresponding geographic division in the other league (East vs. East, Central vs. Center, West vs. West). The unbalanced calendar is not necessarily fair, but nothing this year has been fair. MLB is doing the best it can with the schedule.
The revelation of the MLB schedule does not carry the same weight as the revelation of the college football or NFL schedule, especially this year because we already know the breakdown, but that does not mean that we are not expecting specific confrontations. Here are eight series we can’t wait to watch during the crazy 60 game run, listed chronologically.
1. July 23-26: New York Yankees at the Washington Nationals
USATSI
MLB is not playing. They want to generate as much intrigue as possible after the shutdown, and pitting the Yankees, a legitimate World Series contender, and also THE YANKEES, against the defending World Series champions on Opening Day is a good way to do it. The Yankees will be in Washington to start the season. Gerrit Cole is likely to make his Yankees debut that night and oppose Max Scherzer. The two were supposed to meet in Game 5 of the World Series last year, before Scherzer acted. Better late than never. Cole vs. Scherzer to start the season is as good as it sounds.
2. July 24-26: Colorado Rockies at Texas Rangers
There’s nothing special about this matchup: The Rangers and Rockies have basically zero history, but the opening series will be the first series at the new Globe Life Field in Arlington. Joey Gallo recently told reporters that the new stadium is “playing big as hell” during batting practice, which would be the opposite pole of the team’s old digs. Globe Life Park was a hitter’s paradise. Globe Life Field may be the opposite. We’ll get our first test of the world’s largest Home Depot in just over two weeks.
3. August 14-16: Los Angeles Dodgers at Los Angeles Angels
The 2020 edition of the Freeway Series will kick off in mid-August and has never been so star-studded before. Reigning MVPs Mike Trout and Cody Bellinger will join former MVP Mookie Betts, World Series champion Anthony Rendon, and headlines such as three-time Cy Young winner Clayton Kershaw, inner circle Hall of Fame member Albert Pujols. , rising star Walker Buehler, everyone – world defender Andrelton Simmons and king FAR (Fun Above Replacement) Shohei Ohtani. Five former MVPs (Betts, Bellinger, Kershaw, Pujols, Trout) with a total of nine awards will be on the same field in this series. If that’s not a record, it has to be very close.
4. August 21-23: Arizona Diamondbacks at the San Francisco Giants
For the first time in his career, Madison Bumgarner can pitch at Oracle Park as a visiting player this season. He left the Giants and signed a five-year contract with the D-Backs over the winter, Bumgarner reportedly left money on the table to go to Arizona, and will now face his former employer as a rival to the division. The D-Backs will play seven games divided into two series in San Francisco this year, and hopefully Bumgarner will line up to pitch at least one of those seven games. Unfortunately for the faithful of the Giants, the universal DH means that they will not be able to see it hit. He will only launch.
5. August 28-30: Oakland Athletics vs. Houston Astros
Welcome back to Houston, Mike Fiers. The fierces blew the whistle on the Astros and their 2017-18 poster-stealing scheme over the winter and the result was an unprecedented punishment that, among other things, cost manager AJ Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow their jobs. . It’s unclear if fans will be able to enter the ballpark right now (Texas is pushing to fill the stadiums at 50 percent full), but if they do, they plan to give Fiers the business. Of course, Fiers can’t even launch this series, but he’s likely to run into his old team sometime in 2020. There won’t be much love lost in that series.
6. August 31 to September 2: Chicago White Sox in Minnesota Twins
I have this series circulated on my calendar. The Twins are AL Central’s defending champions and pre-season favorites to win the division again this year. The White Sox are a promising club with plenty of young talent (Lucas Giolito, Eloy Jiménez, Yoan Moncada, Luis Robert, etc.) looking to make the leap from rebuilder to contender. This series, one of three players on the way at Target Field, will be a kind of measure for the young ChiSox. It should be fun. (The Twins and White Sox open the season with three games on the guaranteed rate pitch, though the Target Field series is the one that catches my eye the most.)
7. September 8-10: Cincinnati Reds at Chicago Cubs
The NL Central has great potential for chaos this season. Sportsline projects four of the division’s five teams in the 31-33 win range (sorry, Pirates). There is no powerful team in the National League Central: the other five divisions have at least one team projected for more than 35 wins, and that could create a lot of excitement in the stretch. I’m pointing to the Reds at the Cubs here because Nick Castellanos will return to Wrigley Field as a visiting player this year. He was a rock star in his two months with the Cubbies last season, hitting .321 / .356 / .646 with 16 home runs in 51 games, but the club never made a great effort to sign him again. Castellanos is now playing for a division rival.
8. September 12-13: Houston Astros at the Los Angeles Dodgers
In Before Times, the Astros had to face an ugly schedule on the road full of boos and boos, and novel outbursts of trash after the cartel theft scandal. Perhaps no team should feel more wronged than the Dodgers, who lost the 2017 World Series in seven games to Houston. It is unlikely that there will be fans in the stands of this series, so the Astros will come out quietly there, but this series will be the first time that the Astros will face a team heavily affected by their sign theft transgressions. Fireworks? Perhaps! Even if not, these two games will feature two very good teams and should be fun. (The Dodgers will be in Houston July 28-29. It will be their first road series of the season.)
Bonus: the final weekend
In a short 60 game season, teams will have less time to create standoff. That means when the final weekend comes, the various postseason races could be very tight, and a lot could be at stake. Here are the matchups for the last weekend of the 2020 regular season:
The Tigers-Royals series may not seem all that important now, but who knows? Strange things happen in small samples and one or both clubs could compete for a postseason berth on the final weekend. It would be great fun MLB could use one or two Cinderella stories this season. Otherwise, the Angels-Dodgers, Braves-Red Sox, Brewers-Cardinals, Cubs-White Sox, Mets-Nationals and Phillies-Rays stand out as series with postseason positions potentially at stake.
