As a 162-game baseball season grows dimmer by the day, a truncated season will introduce new elements toward deciding the next champion: tighter pennant races, more sleeper teams, huge schedule inequities and a World Series that could be played in mid-November.
Officially, Major League Baseball has not yet abandoned the hope of playing a 162-game schedule. Unofficially, that possibility all but evaporated when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended no gatherings of 50 or more people for the next eight weeks. That recommendation carries through May 10 (and could be extended based on the trajectory of the coronavirus spread).