Royals would get new division foes under one reported realignment idea for ’20 season
The COVID-19 pandemic has scuttled plans for much of the sports world, and leagues are not only wondering when they might return to action but how that would look.
The NBA was scheduled to finish its season next week and begin the playoffs soon after. The NHL’s postseason would be underway at this point.
And Major League Baseball would be starting the third week of its regular season.
Instead, all three leagues have suspended play indefinitely.
Earlier this week, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported Major League Baseball was considering having all 30 teams play games at spring-training sites in Arizona. The league said nothing has been finalized and that it was “considering numerous contingency plans.”
A story by USA Today’s Bob Nightengale said MLB has discussed one “radical plan that would eliminate the traditional American and National Leagues for 2020.”
That story stressed “the proposal is one of several being discussed.”
Spring-training sites are split evenly among MLB teams, with 15 in Arizona and 15 in Florida, so this proposal would eliminate out-of-state travel.
But it would also give the Royals a brand-new slate of division foes in the “Cactus League Northwest”: Rangers, Mariners, Padres and Brewers.
“I’m not sure we’ll be able play in our own cities across the country, so if you split it up like that, it’s a possibility,’’ Tony La Russa, Angels’ senior advisor of baseball operations, told USA Today.
The Royals and Rangers share Surprise Stadium, so that would require no travel for either team. Ditto for the Padres and Mariners who share a facility in Peoria, Arizona. The Brewers train at American Family Fields of Phoenix.
If this was the route Major League Baseball took, Royals fans would see more of Eric Hosmer and Lorenzo Cain, who now play for the Padres and Brewers, respectively.
The Tigers and Twins would move to the Grapefruit League, so the Royals wouldn’t face them. The Indians and White Sox would be in the Cactus League West in Arizona.
While games would be played in empty stadiums, they would be on television, and that’s one big reason Major League Baseball is considering different ways to return, says Peter Scrimgeour, an analyst at Sportcal, a firm that says it offers “sports marketing intelligence.”
“Although the plan would see MLB forgo gate receipts which account for the largest proportion of its annual revenues, worth $10.7 billion in 2019, the league has national media rights deals with Fox, ESPN and Turner Sports, which are valued at a whopping $1.55 billion per year,” Scrimgeour said in a statement to The Star.
“Any return to the field would ensure television rights payments, while satisfying their media partners who generated more than $60 million in ad revenue from MLB games for the first three months of the 2019 season according to MediaRadar, and now have no live sports of any kind to broadcast due to the global coronavirus pandemic.”
You can see the other division alignments and read more here.
This story was originally published April 10, 2020 at 10:27 AM.
