20 observations from MLB's wild '20 season

Cardboard fans, ghost runners, seven-inning games, 41 Cardinals commuting to Chicago in 41 rental cars. Welcome to baseball in 2020 — and the season is only 30% over! Depending on which team you’re talking about, of course. 

Just because this season began with a 60-game schedule doesn’t mean each club is going to shoehorn that many in. Commissioner Rob Manfred will have his fingers crossed, watching those daily weather reports. But let’s just say, for the sake of this gimmicky rundown, that we’re roughly a third of the way through, and so we present 20 observations about the first 20 games of 2020.

1. Double vision. The Cardinals, sidelined since July 29 due to a coronavirus outbreak, finally returned with Saturday’s doubleheader against the White Sox, the first of 11 scheduled twinbills through the end of the season. While that makes for a busy six weeks, St. Louis actually will play 44 fewer innings overall — the equivalent of nearly five “regular” games — because of those doubleheaders.

2. Cleveland doesn't rock. Cleveland’s Zach Plesac blamed the “evil” media for making him out to be the bad guy for ignoring protocol, resulting in his quarantine with running mate/fellow rule-breaker Mike Clevinger. But no one was harsher on the duo than their own teammates — who blasted them as liars — and both were optioned (banished?) to the alternate site Friday.

3. War of attrition. Avoiding the coronavirus is only part of the challenge. With Aaron Judge (calf strain) going on the IL and Jacob deGrom (finger issue) missing a start, just surviving the season is already a problem. Giancarlo Stanton, Mike Soroka, Justin Verlander, Shohei Ohtani, Alex Wood, A.J. Puk, Charlie Morton, Stephen Strasburg and Corey Kluber are among those missing significant time with non-COVID-19 injuries.

4. Get me a beer while you’re up? The Nationals’ Stephen Strasburg was ejected during Thursday’s matinee at Citi Field by plate ump Carlos Torres for arguing balls and strikes — from his seat in the stands. Strasburg, wearing shorts and a mask, tipped his cap on the way out.

5. Now take away the trophy. The Dodgers’ Joe Kelly shouldn’t be applauded for throwing at the heads of the Astros, but he did get his eight-game suspension knocked down to five on appeal. He also got his point across, with a mocking whiny face upon his ejection, then called the Astros “snitches” and “rats” on teammate Ross Stripling’s podcast.

6. L.A. Story. Mookie Betts smartly decided not to wait for this uncertain offseason to get his money, signing a 12-year, $365 million extension with the Dodgers, and he’s also delivering right away. His three-homer game Thursday was already his sixth in his career, tying the record shared with Sammy Sosa and Johnny Mize.

7. Where’s the 'O'? Betts aside, the early offensive numbers are trending downward, as the league-wide batting average through Friday flirted with the all-time low at .239 (from .252 last season) and OPS was at .731 (from .758). Average runs scored also dipped to 4.64 from 4.83 a year ago.

8. Droning on and on. Fenway Park had to be cleared Thursday and the game delayed for roughly four minutes when a drone appeared flying over the rightfield bleachers. Oddly enough, it was the second drone delay this season, the first happening at Minnesota’s Target Field earlier this month.

9. Nod to the Splinter. Kudos to the Rockies’ Charlie Blackmon for putting things in perspective about potentially hitting .400 for the season. “It’s not a full season; it’ll be an asterisk,” said Blackmon, who expressed doubt that he could do so. Still, Blackmon was batting .472 (34-for-72) through his first 18 games.

10. Let’s make a deal? With this year’s adjusted Aug. 31 trade deadline looming, it’s hard to expect much activity, for a number of reasons. With the expanded 16-team playoff format, virtually every team will be alive — hence, almost zero sellers — and GMs will be reluctant to risk much for a shot at a World Series that may never happen anyway if a second COVID-19 surge becomes problematic this fall.

11. Houston (still) has a problem. Apparently, the Astros’ toxic culture survived the winter purge as hitting coach Alex Cintron harassed the A’s Ramon Laureano from the dugout, then challenged him to a fight, which sparked a benches-clearing brawl. Cintron rightly was tagged with a 20-game suspension.

12. Off the hook. After losing more than half their roster (17 players) to a coronavirus outbreak that required seven games to be postponed, the Marlins finally returned Friday to Miami after spending 21 days on the road. They won their home opener, 8-2 over the Braves, to improve to 9-4 and atop the NL East.

13. Buffalo wings. With Canada closed to the Blue Jays, they’re shacking up at Buffalo’s Sahlen Field —home of the Triple-A Bisons — and started playing there this week after a three-week barnstorming tour of the league. Tuesday’s opener marked the first time in 105 years that MLB games were played in three different New York state ballparks on the same day, as the Yankees and Mets also were home that night.

14. The long, short season. Despite fewer games, you’re getting more baseball, time-wise, this year as the average length of a nine-inning game was up to a record 3:06 through Thursday. Then again, the runner on second rule is getting less use, with only 7.95% of games going beyond nine innings, down from 8.56% a year ago (h/t baseball-reference.com).

15. Stopping the spread. Despite scary, disruptive outbreaks among the Marlins and Cardinals, MLB announced Friday an updated total of 75 positives out of 66,127 samples collected during their monitoring testing phase, for an infected rate of 0.1%. Overall, in the U.S., the positive rate was 7.0% through Friday. 

16.  Yaz, the sequel. The Giants’ Mike Yastrzemski is off to a Triple Crown start this season — just like his Hall of Fame grandfather (and Southampton native) Carl — by hitting .314 with 4 homers, 12 RBIs and a 1.077 OPS through his first 20 games. Little Yaz spent seven seasons in the minors before last year’s MLB debut. He turns 30 next week.

17. No Stro’ show at Citi. Marcus Stroman wasn’t alone in opting out of this season for COVID-19-related concerns, but he did so after accumulating just enough service time to qualify for free agency — while on the IL. That begs the question: if healthy, would he have pulled himself out of the rotation to do the same? We’ll never know.

18. On the bubble. Not surprising that potential plans for an MLB playoff bubble surfaced this month after seeing the success of the NBA and NHL at their self-contained sites. The issues are when and where. It probably has to wait for the Final Four — LCS and World Series, with a dome in a virus-controlled region the priority. Right now, that’s nearly impossible to forecast.

19. No buyer’s remorse on Cole. Spending $324 million on a pitcher can be a dicey investment, but the Yankees bought one that doesn’t lose. Cole posted his 20th consecutive regular-season victory Friday night (in 27 starts) and is now four away from tying the record owned by Carl Hubbell (1936-37).

20. Friars surprising in San Diego. The return of the brown-and-gold uniforms isn’t the only reason the Padres — under Huntington Station’s A.J. Preller as GM — are looking great this season. Shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr., 21, is the talk of the sport and was behind only Aaron Judge with eight homers through Friday as the Padres stood at 11-10.   

By David Lennon

dave.lennon@newsday.comDPLennon

David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.