How a MLB Postseason Without Fans Will Affect Players
By Brooke Brottman
With an unprecedented Major League Baseball season comes an unprecedented Major League Baseball postseason. The 2020 MLB playoffs will certainly be unlike anything baseball fans have seen before. With neutral sites, limited off-days, and a record number of teams competing for a World Series title, this could prove to be the craziest October in Major League Baseball history. As it’s been for years, there will still be four rounds to this year’s MLB playoffs. The difference is that the top seed in each league does not get to wait around to see what will happen in a wild card game. All 16 teams will be involved in the first round in a best-of-three series. This means that we could see a divisional round that includes zero division winners. Also, the top four seeds in each league will host every game in the opening round in their home ballpark before the postseason moves to neutral sites.
MLB stadiums will continue to feature virtual fans throughout the postseason (Photo: Corey Sipkin/UPI)
This year, there is something else unusual. Both Chicago teams are playing in the postseason. It is just the third time that the North Side Cubs and the South Side White Sox reached the playoffs in the same year. In a normal year, fans on both sides of town would be pouring into the streets or packing into the sports bars to celebrate. However, this is 2020, a year of mask-wearing and social distancing, and what is putting a damper on what could turn out to be the best year for baseball in Chicago in more than a century.
In a baseball stadium, fan influence is everything, especially in October. Spectators are strictly forbidden from interfering between Fans Space and Players Space. However, not all fan influence is interference. In fact, fans constantly affect play without ever touching any player or any part of the field of play. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes accidentally, fans have figured out how to change the outcomes of a game without violating the rules or regulations.
Relievers, particularly closers, thrive off the roar of the crowd. Fans help them find the extra adrenaline they need to pitch the ninth inning of tight games. Now, these pitchers are faced with the task of manufacturing that push. Hitters, especially those who come up in clutch situations, usually find the adrenaline rush from the loud fan base. For example, last week the Nationals and the Yankees were tied, 2-2, in the eighth inning when Sean Doolittle came on in relief for Washington. In another year, there would have been nearly 35,000 fans getting to their feet and amping up the volume, urging the defending champions on in a tight spot against a tough opponent. This year in 2020, the seats were empty, and the only sound came from the stadium sound system that generates crowd noise. The Yankees took a 3-2 lead and went on to win the game. This year there will still be adrenaline, but it will not be the same. In a world without fans, there is no eruption when a ball is hit or when a strike three is thrown. This season, the “boos” and “cheers” from a crowd will be replaced with the fake crowd excitement used on base hits. For the players, the cheering for the base hit will start later than real crowd noise would, and it will stay at the same noise level throughout, not quite giving a real-world atmosphere for the players.
Fans have the power to make demands. In a normal season, when an opposing pitcher makes numerous pickoffs attempts to first in a row, he will most likely get booed. The pitcher is influenced by the boos, that throwing too many pickoff attempts is annoying, and he wants to avoid being annoying. So he probably will not throw another pick off in the game. Take away the fans and the social pressure to cease pick-off attempts drops way down.
The 2020 playoffs will be a fanless experience, and in unexpected ways, it will be decided by its fanlessness. Just as so many postseason games of the past have been unexpectedly decided by their fanfulness. In some of the most important moments in postseason history, the fans arguably changed the outcomes of the game. However, this is 2020 and that will not be the case for the MLB postseason.
Brooke is a sports writer for La Tonique.
