Texas Rangers: Opening Day delayed further following CDC report

The Texas Rangers foray into Globe Life Field will be delayed further as MLB pushed back their start date again following a CDC recommendation.

Late Sunday night, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), published new recommendations in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The new recommendations from the CDC were the suggested cancellation of all events with 50 or more people in attendance for the next eight weeks. Originally, the league had set an rather optimistic tentative start date of early April for the Texas Rangers and the rest of the clubs. That, while an unlikely start date in the first place, has now been bypassed after the league changed the tentative season start date on Monday.

MLB released a statement detailing a call between Commissioner Rob Manfred and the 30 teams in the league in which it was decided that the start date of the regular season would be moved back in compliance with the new guidelines set forth by the CDC. That would set the potential start date to May 10th. Without jumping into speculation, it can be deduced that this still falls under a best case scenario and we detailed last week a report from Scott Miller at Bleacher Report  that cited front office sources who were preparing for a late-May, early-June start date. If the clubs can reconvene eight weeks from now, we can infer that they would spend at least a week or two allowing players to get back into workouts and game form.

It has not been decided how the season will be formatted whenever it is able to start. In the statement from Major League Baseball it was noted that the intention of the clubs is to play as many scheduled games as possible. However, a late-May or early-June start date would mean the season is about two months behind normal schedule. If the goal is to play all 162 games, the season would carry well into December which makes that notion feel a bit unlikely. We likely won’t see a firm plan until we get a firm Opening Day date but it will be interesting to see how the league, and all leagues in various sports, adjust when the seasons finally resume.

For the Texas Rangers as a franchise, this means that the opening of Globe Life Field will be pushed back further. Texas’ new ballpark was generating plenty of buzz around the league and fans were excited to see the ‘new era’ of Rangers’ baseball get its start. For now, it seems that buzz for the new era will have to put on pause for a couple of months.