After 99 days, Major League Baseball and the MLB Players’ Association agreed on a new collective bargaining deal that preserves a 162-game regular season for 2022, even though everything starts a week later than expected (April 14, rather than April 7). We will look at the impact of the new deal on the season calendar as you plan your online MLB betting for the coming season.
MLB News: Opening Day Rundown
March 17-18
This was “Opening Day” for spring training in both the Cactus League (Arizona) and the Grapefruit League (Florida). Teams only had about seven days of workouts before these games started, which was significantly shorter than the usual timeline. Because of this, you can expect to see the major league players, especially the pitchers, get much less time than usual in the first few days of spring training.
April 7
This is Opening Day for the regular season. The two sides agreed simply to jump into the schedule that was already set instead of building an entirely new one, and there are eight contests scheduled for that day. The games that were canceled before April 7 have been pushed to the end of the regular season. Here are the eight Opening Day games:
- Chicago White Sox at Kansas City Royals
- Boston Red Sox at N.Y. Yankees
- Seattle Mariners at Minnesota Twins
- Pittsburgh Pirates at St. Louis Cardinals
- N.Y. Mets at Washington Nationals
- Cincinnati Reds at Atlanta Braves
- Milwaukee Brewers at Chicago Cubs
- Houston Astros at L.A. Angels
- San Diego Padres at Arizona Diamondbacks
This schedule may change, especially the White Sox-Royals game, as that was the last game of a three-day set. Rather than have teams travel after one game, it is likely that they will agree to postpone that game and make it up later in the season, and so the two teams will both start new series on April 8. The teams that do not appear above have that day off on April 8. Here is the April 8 schedule:
- Chicago White Sox at Detroit Tigers
- Milwaukee Brewers at Chicago Cubs
- Oakland A’s at Tampa Bay Rays
- L.A. Dodgers at Colorado Rockies
- Miami Marlins at San Francisco Giants
- N.Y. Mets at Washington Nationals
- Texas Rangers at Toronto Blue Jays
- Cincinnati Reds at Atlanta Braves
- Cleveland Guardians at Kansas City Royals
- Houston Astros at L.A. Angels
- San Diego Padres at Arizona Diamondbacks
Because of the shortened spring training, rosters will expand from their normal 26 to 28 for the month of April, and there is no limit to the number of pitchers on the roster. This is designed to protect pitchers from injury after the shortened spring training. After May 1, normal roster rules will apply. Doubleheaders, which featured seven-inning games the last two seasons, return to nine-inning games.
Another rule change is the “Shohei Ohtani Rule,” named after the Angels phenom who can pitch and hit at an elite level. This involved a change to the designated hitter rule, allowing pitchers to stay in the batting order as the DH. Previously, a field player could not also be the DH, which was one reason why Ohtani did not pitch and hit very often; when Ohtani was relieved by another pitcher, the Angels no longer had the use of the DH. This rule will let Ohtani contribute more – and it will also encourage other teams that have two-way players like Ohtani pitch and hit.
The last major change has to do with runners in extra innings. The “ghost runner” – a runner on second base to start each extra inning, to encourage additional scoring and bring games to a quicker end. This will be a rule in 2022 only – at least for now.
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