Team Source: 2020 Minor League Baseball Season Cancelled

While Major League Baseball’s owners and players argue on how much revenues should be split and what salaries should look like during a potential shortened 2020 season due to the coronavirus pandemic, it seems like there’s already been one notable casualty: the 2020 Minor League Baseball season.

Britt Ghiroli, who covers the Washington Nationals for The Athletic, tweeted on Sunday afternoon that as nearly all the team’s minor league free agents were cut and were told that there would be no 2020 MiLB season.

Following that report, I was contacted by a seasonal employee from one of the Nationals’ minor league clubs. The employee, who’d spent six seasons with that team, was told that there would be no MiLB season this year when they were let go last week. The employee was paid for the month of May and told “thank you for everything you’ve done for the organization.”

As Ghiroli noted in a follow-up tweet, nothing is official yet. But as we flip the calendar from May to June, the window for even an 80-game, short-season style minor league season is closing. Full season leagues usually begin in early April after a proper Spring Training and short-season league begin toward the end of June after the annual amateur draft. There will soon come a point where putting together an MiLB season for 160 different teams across the country wouldn’t be financially feasible, especially when roughly 40 of those teams are on the chopping block for 2021. And given that so much of teams’ revenue come from games with fans packed in the seats, it wouldn’t make sense to put together games without fans during the pandemic that would be guaranteed to lose teams money.

Additionally, it’s only logical to assume that there won’t be a minor league season if there’s no MLB season. As June approaches, the window for an agreement between owners and players to get teams ready for a July 4 season opener is quickly closing. As each day passes, it’s looking less likely that we’ll have Major League Baseball in 2020. For Minor League Baseball, that moment may have already passed. Now all we can do is wait for an official word.