The 2020 Major League Baseball schedule has been released and we now know what’s on tap for each of the 30 teams in their upcoming 60-game schedules.
The pandemic-shortened season will begin on July 23rd with a pair of night games with a full Opening Day happening on July 24th. Let’s take a closer look at the schedule to see how it all breaks down.
Teams Will Play Regional Schedules
The 2020 season will be interesting to watch. Due to time constraints, the teams are mostly going to stick to playing their division. 40 of the games will be made of up playing the other four teams in the division 10 times and then the remaining 20 games will be played against interleague times from the same region.
In other words, teams from the National League West will play against teams in the American League West and so on.
Players have already begun reporting to “summer camp” as they prepare for the season. Of course, the coronavirus pandemic is still looming large as some players have tested positive.
This is bound to happen as we play out the 2020 campaign, so we could see all sorts of various stars, role players and coaches being forced to quarantine at any point in the season – including the playoffs.
It’s been a weird calendar year and the baseball season is bound to take a lot of twists and turns as a result too.
MLB Action Starts On July 23rd
The 2020 MLB season will start on Thursday, July 23rd with a pair of games. The New York Yankees will visit the defending champion Washington Nationals at 7:00 PM ET and then the San Francisco Giants will face the Los Angeles Dodgers at 10:00 PM ET.
In terms of the early action, we caught up with BetMGM to get some details as to what the bettors are doing so far.
“Opened at Yankees -125 now Yankees -135. The total hasn’t moved much from 7.5”, says Jason Scott, BetMGM’s Vice President of Trading.
As for Friday’s schedule, we’ll have 14 games on the board, which will include:
Friday, July 24th
- Atlanta Braves at New York Mets at 4:10 PM ET
- Detroit Tigers at Cincinnati Reds at 6:10 PM ET
- Toronto Blue Jays at Tampa Bay Rays at 6:40 PM ET
- Miami Marlins at Philadelphia Phillies at 7:05 PM ET
- Milwaukee Brewers at Chicago Cubs at 7:10 PM ET
- Kansas City Royals at Cleveland Indians at 7:10 PM ET
- Baltimore Orioles at Boston Red Sox at 7:30 PM ET
- Colorado Rockies at Texas Rangers at 8:05 PM ET
- Minnesota Twins at Chicago White Sox at 8:10 PM ET
- Pittsburgh Pirates at St. Louis Cardinals at 8:15 PM ET
- Seattle Mariners at Houston Astros at 9:10 PM ET
- Arizona Diamondbacks at San Diego Padres at 9:10 PM ET
- San Francisco Giants at Los Angeles Dodgers at 9:40 PM ET
- Los Angeles Angels at Oakland Athletics at 10:10 PM ET
Bettors Investing Heavily In Futures, Props
BetMGM NJ sports betting app and many other sportsbooks in the Garden State have all sorts of odds up on the board in terms of futures, team props and player props. We chatted with BetMGM to get a better idea of where the bettors are investing.
In terms of the American League Cy Young, 20.7% of the money is on Gerrit Cole to win. He’s the favorite but second in line was Shane Bieber of the Cleveland Indians at 17.4%.
In terms of a longshot bettors are going for, 13% of the bets are on Hyun-Jin Ryu of the Toronto Blue Jays.
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Over in the National League, the money for the Cy Young has been mostly on Walker Buehler of the Los Angeles Dodgers as the bet count on him is at 19.5%. Next up is Michael Soroka of the Atlanta Braves, who was at 30/1 and saw 14.5% of the bet money.
Taking a look at the MVP betting, the vast majority of the money is on Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels but the leader in terms of bets is Gleyber Torres of the New York Yankees.
He’s taken 16.03% of the bets – the most of any player – which is why he’s shifted down from +5000 down to +1500.
In the National League, there’s a lot of love for Ronald Acuna Jr. of the Atlanta Braves, who has seen 52.6% of the money and 16.3% of the bets.
In terms of division futures, bettors seem to love their chalk:
“In the NL West, we received a $50K bet to win $5K on the Dodgers at -1000,” said Scott.
In a bit of a surprise twist, though, it seems some bettors are taking a flier on long shots just because you never know what might happen during this season.
“We’ve also got a decent amount of liability on the Orioles (+8000), Royals (+8000) Mariners (+6500) Marlins, and (+15000),” says Scott. “It appears that bettors are seeing the shortened season as the potential for teams that have historically underperformed to maybe luck out and get more wins.”
