Newest MLB 2020 plan features Grapefruit and Cactus leagues with divisional realignment

The baseball world was sent into a frenzy earlier this week when ht was reported that Major League Baseball and the Players’ Union were having preliminary discussions about playing the 2020 season in some kind of Biodome-esque situation in Arizona.

While the plan generated quite a bit of excitement from fans who badly want to see baseball return at some point this year, it was difficult to wash away the skepticism that came along with it. There’s the difficulty of quarantining players from their families for extended periods of time, and of course, the issue of the whole operation going up in flames if one player contracts the virus.

Regardless, MLB is going to continue to try to come up with ways to bring baseball back, no matter how difficult and unrealistic it might be.

On Friday, USA Today reported that MLB’s newest idea would see teams heading back to their own spring training facilities in Florida and Arizona, rather than housing all 30 teams and their staffs in the desert. The benefit here is that it would allow teams to operate in the comfort of their own spring training homes, which are places they’re familiar with already.

In this plan, the divisions would be realigned so that teams could play against other teams who have spring training facilities close to them. So, for the Blue Jays, that would mean sharing a division with the Tigers, Pirates, Phillies, and, of course, the Yankees.

Issues still remain, chief among them being keeping players from getting the virus and keeping players from their families, but allowing teams to operate in their own, familiar spring training facilities makes a lot more sense than just tossing all 30 teams in a Biodome in the desert for a few months.