© Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports
If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that Rob Manfred is the greatest sports commissioner of all time and that Major League Baseball’s restart has gone to absolute perfection. That’s been proven by the disastrous negotiations setting up the last-ditch, 60-game season, followed by many positive coronavirus tests within a few organizations.
The Miami Marlins, who had 18 total players test positive, were forced to postpone seven games, as were the Philadelphia Phillies, who they faced despite knowing about those positive tests, and then the St. Louis Cardinals, who have played just five games this season, after having 15 postponements due to at least nine positive player tests and seven positive staff tests. One report from Jon Heyman suggested Cardinals players went to a casino.
Now MLB is considering a playoff bubble, per ESPN’s Jeff Passan. It would look much more like the NHL’s multi-city bubble than the one in the NBA, in order to accommodate all the teams involved.
Per Passan, at least three hubs would be necessary for the wild-card round, before moving to a two-hub approach in the divisional round:
The league championship series and World Series could be held at one or two stadiums. Remaining in one metropolitan area would allow teams to avoid air travel and perhaps remain at a single hotel for the entire postseason, which is scheduled to begin Sept. 27. MLB also could hold wild-card-round games at home sites to mitigate concerns over scheduling up to three games at a single site and move to a bubble format starting in the division series, sources said.
Southern California, the greater Chicago area and the New York metropolitan area would make the most sense because of the available stadiums, sources said. Concerns about weather in late September and deep into October make the Los Angeles area the most logical choice to host an entire postseason, though the sources cautioned that because of the nascent nature of discussions, no favorite has emerged.
Los Angeles County has had 210,000 positive COVID-19 tests and nearly 5,000 recorded deaths due to the coronavirus.
