Get Ready Minnesota Twins fans, Baseball is BACK!

It’s time Minnesota Twins fans: MLB owners and the MLBPA fully agreed on the plans to start the 2020 season.

Finally. Ever since Major League baseball first made an offer to the MLBPA restarting training camp, Minnesota Twins fans and baseball fans across the country have been not-so-patiently waiting for the return of America’s Pastime. That return finally has a date:

Multiple outlets across the baseball world have said the same thing. The MLB and the MLBPA have agreed on the final issues standing in the way of a new season, and we will finally have baseball once again, with camp opening July 1st, Opening Day on July 24th, and the season ending September 27th.

Our writer Greg Simbeck went over the outline of the deal yesterday, but we’ll reiterate the important parts here:

• 60 game season.
• Universal DH for two years.
• $33 million in forgiven salary advances that would increase the take home pay of 61% of major league players.
• A guaranteed $25 million in playoff pools in 2020.
• Overall earnings for players at 104% of prorated salary.
• No expanded postseason in 2021.

In just under a day, we’ve also learned more key details about the upcoming season ahead coming from the Jayson Stark, a writer at the Athletic:

There are two things to note about this:

1. These are going to be massive rosters for the rest of spring training, with 60 players competing for a spot. We’ll get to meet a lot of young Minnesota Twins guys from the system.
2. An August 31st Trade Deadline gives a very small amount of time (July 24th to August 31st) to evaluate whether you’re in the race or out of it, so expect a lot of deals similar to the Jaime Garcia trades as teams attempt to remain competitive.

Stark still had more so we’ll dive into this information as well:

1. With a postseason deadline just two weeks after the trade deadline, players won’t have a lot of time to prove their value to their new clubs, especially with possible social distancing guidelines within clubs themselves.
2. With those slimming rosters, the taxi squads become more and more important.

I promise this is the last tweet by Jayson Stark, but he has a lot of key info for the season restart. The unfreezing of transactions and the submission of the 60-man player pool are exciting steps back towards normal, and the ability to bring three taxi squad players (likely a reliever, infielder, and catcher) adds flexibility.

There are still several COVID-19 questions, as there will be a separate injured list for players with COVID-19 and the 60-Day IL will be moved to 45-Day IL, but those likely will be moving targets that the league deals with as things happen.

We also have a pretty good idea of who the Twins would end up playing against:

This is a great schedule for the Twins, as playing 40/60 games against the weakest division in baseball is an excellent advantage. On top of that, the Minnesota Twins match up really well against the Pirates, Reds, and Cubs, so a 40 win season really isn’t that out of the question.

The important thing to remember here is that baseball is finally back. No more waiting, no more wondering, no more arguing over whose fault it is, no more missing seeing the Minnesota Twins mashing dingers.

Baseball returns, July 1st.