Is Baseball Canceled? + Service Time Explained

Today should be Opening Day of the 2020 MLB season, yet stadiums across North America are empty as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact all aspects of daily life. What’s going on? Is baseball canceled?

 Although MLB and the MLBPA are still working out the details, here’s what we know so far. The 2020 season is delayed at least until June, although it could be pushed back further. The draft—when teams select new players—has been rescheduled for July and reduced to 5-10 rounds (for comparison, the 2019 draft took place in early June and lasted 40 rounds). The 2020 season isn’t canceled, at least not yet. But plans can and likely will continue to change as the pandemic situation evolves.

Since players aren’t actually playing, will they get paid? Their union, the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA), will make sure they get some compensation. The MLBPA is currently in talks with MLB to negotiate salaries and bonuses during this unprecedented situation.

It’s not just about the money, though. Another big issue with the delayed start is service time calculations. What is service time? Basically, it’s the amount of time a player has been an active member of a Major League club (team). A player accrues service time while he’s on the 26-man roster or the injured list. A full MLB season is 187 days long, and players must be on the 26-man roster or IL for 172 of those 187 days in order to get one full year of service time. The number of years of service time a player has impacts his salary: simply put, the more years he has, the more he gets paid.

Sometimes clubs will manipulate service time in order to prevent a player’s salary from going up or to keep him on the team longer. Kris Bryant filed a grievance against the Chicago Cubs for doing this in 2015: even though Bryant did extremely well in the Minor Leagues, the Cubs waited to call him up to the Major League team until late enough in the season that he was only able to accrue 171 days of service time instead of the 172 needed for a full year. In January 2020—no idea why it took so long—an arbitrator ruled that the Cubs did not break any rules by doing this. Kris Bryant has to wait until after the 2021 season to file for free agency; in other words, the Cubs get to keep him on the team an extra year.

This article does a good job explaining why service time is so important and how it might be affected by this season’s irregularities. MLB and the MLBPA have agreed that players will get the same amount of service time for 2020 as they did for 2019 if the 2020 season is called off entirely, which is probably good for players but would have some interesting repercussions. For example, the Red Sox traded Mookie Betts to the Dodgers in February, but Betts becomes a free agent in 2021; if the 2020 season is canceled, he might never play a game for the Dodgers. Mookie Betts is one of the most highly regarded players in MLB so this would undoubtedly be disappointing for the Dodgers, but there isn’t necessarily a better option.

If the 2020 season starts up in June as tentatively planned, there will have to be a second round of spring training in May. In the meantime, MLB is trying to keep fans happy and practicing social distancing with the Opening Day at Home initiative, which is happening right now: 30 past games, one for each MLB club, are being streamed on multiple platforms for free. You can find the schedule here. Commissioner of Baseball Rob Manfred wrote a letter to fans explaining Opening Day at Home and discussing what to expect from MLB going forward. You can read his letter here.