MLB has been exploring ways to play as many games as po sible in 2020 after losing a chunk of the season to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Extreme ideas have includeda 140-game slate with lots of doubleheaders and playoffs extending into late autumn.A much more modest ideareached the rumor stage Wednesday. A sourcetold Chicago sports radio host Matt Speigel that MLB is that would begin July 1, include no All-Star Game and end with a November World Series at Dodger Stadium.MORE: Implementation isn't closebecause there's still no telling Mike Person Jersey whether there will be a season. The pandemic needs to subside first, and there's no timetable forthat.Still, there was enough information in Spiegel's tweets to form three thoughts on the supposedproposal.A 100-game season can produce a legitimate playoff fieldLast season's standings offer the guidance. Through last July 25, all MLB clubshad played at least 100 games. The teams in the 10 playoff spots at that point were theYankees, Twins, Astros, Indians and A's in the American League, and the Braves, Cubs, Dodgers, Nationals Arik Armstead Jersey and Cardinals in the National League.Eightof those teams made the playoffs; the only changes werethe Rays replacing the Indians in the AL and the Brewers replacing the Cubs in the NL. The NL Central and wild-card races were tightand the Cardinals moved from a wild-card berth to a division title, but the field remained 80 percent intact.That's evidence that, in a pinch, a Joshua Garnett Jersey truncated regular season can decidethe best teams almost aswell as a 162-game slate, which many fans and media consider to be too long.A split season should be avoidedThe tweets didn't make mention of such a setup, but it would be wise for baseball to learn from what happened in 1981.That year, a midseason players strike wiped outslightlymore than a third of the schedule.When playresumed in July, the prestrike standings were used to determine the "first-half" division winnersand the poststrike standings determined the "second-half" division winners.That producedbad outcomes. The Reds and Cardinalshad the two best overall winning percentages in the NL but neither team made the expanded playoffs because they finished second in both halves. The proto-Division Series pitted the Phillies against the Expos and the Dodgers against the Astros.MORE: In the AL, the Royals got in with an overall losing record because they won the second-half West title. They faced the A's in the West Division Series while the Yankees and Brewers met in the East.A 50-50 split this year would roughly match the '81 Deion Sanders Jersey breakdown. The current playoff format would help to prevent inequities like the ones suffered by Cincinnati and St. Louis,but there's still a chance ateam with the best overall record in its league would have to play in some type ofwild-card game.A neutral-site World Series might not be nece sarySpiegel's tweeted report said the revised regular season would end Thursday, Oct. 15. If there are no changes to the playoff format (i.e., additionalteams), then the World Series would wrap up around mid-November, or about two weeks later than usual. The report also saidthat moving the Series to LA is a way for MLB to compensate for the city losing anAll-Star Game.(In case you Jason Verrett Jersey 'rewondering, Spiegel reported that the Dodgers would have to in barely neutral Anaheim or San Diego if they were to make it.)The kneejerk reaction to a Chavez Ravine Seriesis to say, "Duh, can't play in mid-November up north." Yes, aTwins-Cubs or White Sox-Rockies Fall Cla sic would be dicey, but the majority of Easterncities won't be Arctic at that point. A better reason to go west would be that MLB wants to protect itself and its fans against a return of the coronavirus to colder climates.Since this is a breakdown of a hypothetical, let's wrap this by saying MLB could, in theory, guard against the weather threatby playing a couple of Series games in the daytime Jerick McKinnon Jersey . That's one thing baseball got right in '81 when Games 4 and 5 were afternoon starts at . . . Dodger Stadium.