While the NHL and NBA have figured out a way to get their seasons back on track, the MLB return has mostly been lost at seas.
Whether it’s player demanding a full salary for a shortened season or greedy owners trying to stick it to players so they get stuck with taking the brunt of the burden, the negotiations have been ugly.
At a time when 40 million people are unemployed, nobody wants to hear millionaires and billionaires argue.
The good news is that late on Sunday night, the MLB Players Association sent over a proposal to the owners to approve for a 114-game season.
Let’s take a look at what the would look like if it gets approved.
MLB Return: Players Propose 114-Game Season: No Pay Cuts
Major League Baseball and the players have been going back-and-forth as they try to figure out how they can convince each other to play a shortened season and share the burden of the costs. While many owners are already feeling some animosity and have been rumored to be encouraging the season to be canceled, players responded on Sunday night with a proposal.
What the players would like to do is keep their entire salaries for the 2020 season but offer up to $100 million in deferrals if the postseason is canceled or shortened. What their plan for the season would be is to play 114 games from June 30th to October 31st.
The biggest hurdle is that the owners had previously asked for and expected huge player salary reductions. The players response showed none of that, which means the stalemate is likely to continue.
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MLB Return: Owners Propose Major Player Pay Cuts
As mentioned, the challenge here is that this is a counterproposal to what the owners had offered and it’s quite different than what the owners pitched. They made their proposal on Tuesday and it asked for dramatic reduction in player salaries. The pay scales would see players lose anywhere from 22.4% to 46.5% of their salary in the upcoming season.
Part of this is because the MLB players and owners had agreed in March that player salaries would be prorated. In other words, player salaries would be tied to the number of games that are played. While both sides agreed to that in March, the tricky part is that this was under the assumption that fans would be able to attend.
Now the owners contend that if fans aren’t able to attend, there’s less revenue to go around and they now want the players to take bigger pay cuts.
The owners aren’t really helping themselves as they’re making it seem like they’ll go broke if fans don’t attend. However, Forbes and FanGraphs have reported that fans only account for about 30% of the revenue share, so owners will still stand to be in decent shape if the originally agreed upon proration stands.
Dodgers, Yankees No Co-Favorites To Win 2020 World Series
While the season is still a big question mark, a number of sportsbooks have lined up already on futures. Not only do we have odds to win the 2020 World Series, we also have player props to win various awards like MVP and Cy Young.
We also have NJ sports betting props on who’ll lead the league in strikeouts, hits, runs scored and saves, and we also have regular-season winning percentages.
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Regular Season Winning Percentages
If you’re wondering what these are about, these are simply because we can’t have a regular-season win total right now. We don’t know how long the season will be, so oddsmakers can’t set a number that way. Instead, they are posting over-unders for winning percentages, which gives you the same type of prop but presented in a different way.
Most Home Runs
Mike Trout (+950) is favored to lead the Majors in home runs this season but keep in mind that for this prop, at least 75 games have to be played in the 2020 season.
Joey Gallo (+1000), Pete Alonso (+1000), Giancarlo Stanton (+1300) and Aaron Judge (+1500) are next in line.
Most Hits
The hits prop has the same 75-game minimum for action and it’s Nolan Arenado (+1300) and Whit Merrifield (+1300) who are co-favored here. D.J. LeMahieu (+1400) and Jose Altuve (+1500) are next up.
Most Strikeouts
- Gerrit Cole (+210) is favored to lead the Majors in strikeouts this season at Fanduel.
- He’s a sizable favorite when you consider that Max Scherzer (+550) is further back along with Jacob DeGrom (+700) and Justin Verlander (+850).
Most Runs Scored
We’ve got a couple of Los Angeles guys at the top of the board here:
- Mookie Bettis (+700) is the favorite with Mike Trout (+850) next in line at PointsBet.
- Francisco Lindor (+1100), Ronald Acuna Jr. (+1100) and Juan Soto are the players who are also close by.
Most Saves
- Aroldis Chapman (+650) is co-favored to lead the league in saves this season along with Roberto Osuna (+650).
- Kenley Jensen is right behind (+750).
World Series Futures
The New York Yankees were the favorite to win the 2020 World Series earlier in the offseason right after they signed Gerrit Cole but that’s changed.
- They are now showing the same odds as the Los Angeles Dodgers, who are also at +380.
- Both teams have loaded up to make big runs. Meanwhile, the Houston Astros are at +750 as the only other team inside of 13/1.
- The Dodgers are actually a massive favorite in the National League as they’re at +155, which is quite low for a futures bet of this type.
- The Atlanta Braves are at +650 and the Washington Nationals are at +850, but those are the only other teams inside of 10/1.
As for the American League, the Yankees are favored at +165 but the Astros are at +370.
The Minnesota Twins are at +750 and the Tampa Bay Rays are at +750, but judging from the odds, the oddsmakers seem to think that this is a four-horse race in the American League this season.
