For the baseball world, The Show must go on.
No, ballplayers don’t appear to be returning to the diamond any time soon. Instead, Major League Baseball has teamed with the MLB Players Association and Sony Interactive Entertainment to launch a first-of-its-kind MLB The Show 20 Players League, MLB announced Friday morning. One player representative from all 30 MLB clubs will participate in the league, with a 29-game regular season beginning Friday night and running through April 28, according to reports.
Using the newly-released MLB The Show 20, each team will face the other once in games set for three innings in length, rather than the typical nine. Players would play multiple games every day or two. The eight-team postseason is scheduled to begin April 30, according to reports, featuring a best-of-three format in the quarterfinals and semifinals. The World Series will be a best-of-five setup on May 2, according to Sony.
The MLB The Show league will be live streamed across various social media platforms, including MLB and MLB The Show’s Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Twitch accounts, MLB Network’s Twitch, various MLB team accounts and MLB.com. The players themselves also will stream from their own social media accounts.