July 18, 2020
The season will start tonight, shortly after 10 pm where I live. I’m writing the season narrative as it unfolds, so this could turn into a description of a championship season or the struggles of an also-ran team. Starting off with a team I already had success with and then going back and writing about it would have been cheating.
Does this raise the stakes a bit? Sure. Do I wish I’d decided to do this before I started drafting the team in the first place? Sure. But does life normally come at you with direct plans that work perfectly? As in baseball, the unpredictable happens.
Five days from now, Major League Baseball plans to start an abbreviated 60-game season that will run roughly parallel with this sim season about to unfold. Our simulated season will play three games a day for 54 days to reach a full 162-game season, starting July 19 and finishing on September 10, followed by a few days of playoffs.
MLB will attempt a Covid-shortened schedule from July 23 to September 27, followed by a month or so of playoffs, if all goes well. A lot has to go well, too. The sports world, like the one at large, looks drastically different in 2020. The only place nothing has changed is here on the computer, where games go on unhindered 365 days a year.
