MLB hoping to have season plan in place by end of May

The plans for an eventual 2020 Major League Baseball season continue to circulate, and there appears to be a timeline for settling on a course of action.

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has remained confident that there will be a season this year, and the league views the end of May as a logical soft deadline to set a plan in place to make it happen, sources have told ESPN's Jeff Passan.

This timeline, according to Passan's sources, would see the MLB players report for three weeks of preparation before the season started in July. Each team would then play between 80 and 100 games during a regular season stretching through October before neutral, warm-weather sites host postseason contests in November.

The season would not be lost necessarily if a template was not finalized by the end of May, Passan noted.

Manfred had previously expressed hope that the season could get underway by mid-May, but that appears unlikely.

"While I fully anticipate that baseball will resume this season, it is very difficult to predict with any accuracy the timeline for the resumption of our season," Manfred wrote in a letter to league employees last week.

Various ideas have been presented as to where and how the season will eventually take place. Those propositions include staging the entire campaign in Arizona or across multiple select states with players living in quarantine. None of the proposed plans are concrete as the league and the MLB Players Association continue to discuss the logistics of a return to action amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Additionally, Passan theorizes the minor-league season could be canceled altogether if MLB expands major-league rosters to help prevent injuries.

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