Baseball is coming back to the Olympics in 2020, but will Major League Baseball players get a chance to compete for an Olympic gold in the middle of the regular season? That seems highly unlikely to happen, and not because the NHL just pulled its players out of the winter games.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has already become known for thinking and discussing new ideas for baseball, but he has been reluctant to suggest professional ballplayers will be going to the Olympics. Riccardo Fraccari, president of the World Baseball Softball Confederation seems to be much mroe optimistic about the possibility.
“I am confident that we can find a positive solution with the MLB,” Fraccari said, according to Around the Rings. “But I need to have more details.”
One hangup in convincing Manfred and MLB to allow players to compete in the Olympics is supposedly the format of the tournament. How much time players would miss or need time off from the MLB schedule is essential. The final details of how the Olympic baseball tournament will be setup will give MLB a better idea of what is required from the league should it decide to get in the Olympic fun.
“We have to finalize the format first,” Fraccari said. He may be a tad optimistic and full of false hope, because no matter what the details are it may be very unlikely MLB makes room for Olympic baseball.
Whenever the details for the Olympic baseball tournament are confirmed, it would still be surprising to see MLB decide to allow players to leave to compete in the games. Minor leaguers may be a different story, but even that should be a concern for MLB. What happens when a position on the major league roster for a team opens up with a player going to the DL and they need to call up a prospect who may be representing his country in the Olympics? That is likely a scenario that should be addressed if needed. That too may be a sticking point that prevents MLB (and Minor League Baseball) from jumping in with the Olympics in 2020.
The problem with Olympic baseball is there are other nations who will make room for the tournament, sending some of their top talent to the games to compete while the best of the best from Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball may be prevented from going. But that would impact more than the United States with the diversity found around the leagues.
The NHL has drawn some criticism for its stance on the Olympics recently, including from players within their own ranks. The NHL has shut its entire league down to allow players to go compete in the Olympics. Even if MLB allowed players to leave for the Olympics, a full league shutdown would be even more unlikely, and perhaps MLB is taking cues from what the NHL has done so far.
It would be fun to see a player like Mike Trout in an Olympic game, but I guess we’ll just have to settle for the World Baseball Classic if we want to see baseball’s top players compete on the international stage.
[Hardball Talk, Around the Rings]
