Baltimore Orioles: MLB 2020 Agreement Could Be On the Horizon

Happy Memorial Day, Baltimore Orioles fans! With the latest news out of the MLB, this week could be memorable for plenty of other reasons.

According to the latest news on the 2020 season, Baltimore Orioles fans might just get to see the team take the field sooner rather than later.

The move seems to be based on deferring player salaries. This will help owners recoup some of their losses due to the shutdown from COVID-19.

According to a Tweet from Chuck Garfien with NBC in Chicago, the players and owners are also looking at a 50/50 revenue split.

Most importantly, Garfien shared this news in his post on the news station’s blog:

"“Progress was made last week on the health-and-safety issues that need to be resolved, with players and the many others needed to stage a season being asked to return to work in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.”"

The salary agreement are meaningless without ample safety protection for all involved in the 2020 games. Even without fans, the players, coaches, and other necessary staff will be exposed and no one wants to see anyone get while delivering entertainment to fans.

In a post by Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich in The Athletic, another item that the players and owners are discussing is the number of games. The players would make more money if they can play more games, but the league owners would not. At this time, the number of games appears to be set at 82, not including the postseason. If stadiums open later in the summer, both parties would financially benefit from adding more games.

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A shorter season would mean that the teams could have a longer postseason. While this probably won’t affect the Baltimore Orioles, postseason baseball brings in the most money to the league. The players and teams involved get a nice bonus, too. Although, most of the money comes from ticket sales.

The Washington Nationals split a pool of over $29 million after winning the 2019 World Series. The Houston Astros split $19 million, even though they lost. Other teams in the playoffs all received a smaller percentage of the gate receipts, too.

Advertising dollars help the MLB during postseason play. Each winter, we learn about the jaw-dropping prices for Super Bowl ads, but :30 ads for the Fall Classic aren’t cheap. Consider that the World Series includes up to seven games, so ad prices aren’t in the millions. Instead, they hover between $300,000 and $350,000 for a single spot. The prices increase if the teams are large-market teams like the Yankees or Red Sox. Interestingly, ad prices are higher in the earlier games.

The signs look good for baseball fans. If all goes well, we could start to see actual, live baseball games played in empty stadiums in the next few weeks.