Or if the latest headlines are to believed, Major League Baseball will be back on either July 23 or 24. Since we are living in unprecedented times, the upcoming season will be unprecedented, too: a 60-game season, regionally isolated, leading up to a full slate of playoff series.
Conventional wisdom says that in a short series, the better team may not always win. A strange bounce, a hot starter, or an ill-timed slump and the underdog emerges. Could the same hold true for a short season?
MLB teams are built for a war that stretches for 162 games. Over the course of a long season, the best teams rise to the top. It's hard to be a 90-win fluke. But throughout the season, even a mediocre team can get hot for a stretch. At the same time, even good teams run into a roster-wide slump now and then. Over time, these small bursts of hot play and cold spells tend to even out.
So what happens in a 60-game season when a mediocre team plays well, say for a 12-game stretch? That's 20% of the entire season! Put another way, those same 12 games in 2020 would represent the equivalent of a 32-game span in a normal 162-game season. A team that goes 8-4 over two weeks would have to go 21-11 to have the same impact.
It will be interesting to watch if another team can make a Nationals-like run, this time over the regular season. Get hot at the right time and make a push for the playoffs and beyond.
