Still missing baseball

What are you missing the most without MLB?

There isn’t another sport like baseball for this, giving you something new to watch on the vast majority of days across the season. A 162-game regular season dwarfs all the other major sports. It’s almost twice as big as the NHL and NBA campaigns, each of which last 82 games, and is TEN TIMES as many contests as the NFL have. Which is great, except when it suddently isn’t there, because the hole left in MLB’s absence is commensurate with its number of games. Personally, I do wonder what’ll happen when it returns, whenever that may be. Other leisure pursuits have certainly expanded to fill the gap, and it’ll be interesting to see to what extent they give way, when baseball games once more become an option.

Are you ok with a neutral site World Series?

It’s certainly preferable to the alternative, that of potentially giving the Dodgers home-field advantage every game of the World Series, in some misbegotten compensation for them losing out on the All-Star Game. [Just give them the next open slot, in 2022] Though I’m not sure why a neutral site should be deemed particularly desirable, unless we are still talking about playing games in front of no audience. If sports have got the green light to open the gates again, then why wouldn’t it be viable to play games in the parks of the two pennant winners as usual? I’d be fine with them playing it in San Diego though. It’s probably the only way Padres fans will get to experience a World Series game at Petco...

Should there be neutral-site game through the playoffs?

A slight variant of the above question, and one which received significantly less support, though still a clear majority. If we end up with Cactus and Grapefruit Leagues for this year’s MLB schedule, it would make sense to have the playoff games here as well. Though would that mean all the Cactus League playoff games taking place at Chase Field? I guess, again, it depends on what the situation is with regard to having fans in attendance. if that’s an option, there aren’t any other facilities of playoff crowd size in the local area, with all the spring training grounds holding fewer than twenty thousand people. I suppose it could hold two games in a day during the Division Series, but it’d be... weird.

Are you ok with regular season neutral-site games?

If that’s what it takes to get baseball back, I think I’d be ok with just about anything. Except the introduction of the designated hitter, of course. It’s not as if Chase Field offers a raging home-field advantage, though if these plans come to fruition, the D-backs could very well end up playing the entire season “at home.” But I wonder, for example, how this might affect the Rockies. They’ve been infamous for their home-road splits. Since 1993, they rank 12th for W% at home, but dead last on the road. Would playing a full season at a neutral site, without having to keep adapting to and from Denver, work for or against them? Maybe we can find out to what extent the likes of Nolan Arenado and Trevor Story are Coors products.