They say this baseball season will be like no other. And, for many more reasons than the shortened 60-game length of it, “they” are right.
For example, this is the first time in their history the Cardinals haven’t played all the teams in their league during the regular season. Counting their interleague games, the Cardinals will play only 31%, or nine, of the other 29 major league teams. Clubs on the East Coast and West Coast might as well be in different galaxies.
The only equivalents, in basketball and hockey, to baseball’s 2020 have come in 1998-99 when a National Basketball Association lockout cut the season to 50 out of 82 games and teams did not play some teams from the other conference.