If it all goes well, then Opening Day for Major League Baseball this year will feature Max Scherzer vs. Gerrit Cole in the nation’s capital.
The union signed off Thursday on the details within a 60-game schedule. However, MLB has not finalized the product yet as teams review the variables and the league continues to navigate what it perceives are its best alternatives to play amid the coronavirus pandemic.
That is no small matter. In a standard year, the schedule is a Jenga game of park availability, satisfying national TV partners, following collectively bargained rules for how many straight days a team can play, etc. This season, COVID-19 complicates matters as exemplified by Arizona, Florida and Texas transforming from places MLB wanted to play a month ago to places with soaring virus cases now.
MLB does not even have plans to finalize a schedule for a week or two, in part because without fans there is no pressure to have games set so tickets could be bought. Better, the league believes, to take its time, see how the testing of personnel goes this week and the preferences expressed in feedback from clubs.
So the current schedule can change drastically and, if it does, the union will have to provide its blessing again.
But the current plan is to launch the regular season on July 23 with the highlight of the day being the Yankees at Nationals Park against the defending champs likely in prime time, The Post has learned.
So much has to go right between now and then as MLB attempts to begin spring training this coming week, with rising virus cases in important baseball states, including California, which houses five teams.
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Keeping personnel healthy from the virus is Job 1, but also trying to limit injuries in such a strange, shortened preparation environment also will be key. But if it all can be pulled off, MLB’s current plan is to have a marquee event at the outset with the Yankees in D.C. The biggest team in the sport vs. the 2019 champs.
The centerpiece of such a game would be — health permitting — Cole’s debut against the three-time Cy Young winner Scherzer, even if starters are just stretched out to three or four innings by then. The two faced each other in World Series Game 1 last year when Cole was still with the Astros. He gave up five runs in seven innings and suffered the loss, while Scherzer earned the win with two runs over five innings.
They were scheduled to square off in Game 5 as well, but Scherzer was scratched due to a back ailment. Cole, in his final game as an Astro, allowed one run in seven innings to earn the victory as Houston moved within one win of a title. However, the Nationals won the final two games in Houston, including a Game 7 in which Scherzer famously started after recovering enough from the bad back and Cole never came in the game in relief despite briefly warming up in the pen.
If this regular season had begun on time on March 28, the Nationals already had announced that Scherzer would get the start at Citi Field vs. the Mets and Jacob deGrom. Cole was lined up to start the Yankees’ opener in Baltimore.
Cole’s debut — after signing a pitching record nine-year, $324 million pact — has been one of the most anticipated elements of the 2020 season.