Report: MLB weighing games in home ballparks

Another day, another radical proposal to get the baseball season started.

This new one comes from Bob Nightengale, who reports the league is considering a plan which would allow teams to start the season in late June.

There are two kickers to this latest proposal. This first is every team would start in their home stadium, albeit empty ones. The other is the league would be realigned to three 10-team divisions.

This would be contingent that COVID-19 testing is available to the public, which would eliminate the need for players to be in isolation, like in the much talked about Arizona plan. One of the main complaints of that proposal is players would have to be quarantined, separating them from their families for possibly months. Some of the game's best players, including Clayton Kershaw and Mike Trout, have come out against the plan for that reason.

Dividing the league into three divisions would also cut down on travel. Nightengale lists the Pirates in the Eastern division, along with the Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, Nationals, Orioles, Phillies, Blue Jays, Rays and Marlins. In fact, the Pirates and Braves are the only teams to trade places compared to the traditional East/Central/West alignment, with the Braves moving to the Central instead.

While this would allow the Pirates to stay in Pittsburgh, they would have to do more traveling to COVID-19 hot spots in New York City and Florida. The quality of their division would also increase, as that division would have the previous two World Series champions and six teams who finished with a winning record in 2019.

Of course, this is still speculation at this point, but one thing has become clear during the search to get the 2020 season underway: It will have a radically new look to it.