College Baseball is Already Underway

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Milwaukee Panthers baseball 2022

Milwaukee Panthers baseball 2022

While Major League Baseball remains on indefinite hold, there is baseball coming in the weeks and months ahead.

Always the first to get started, the college baseball season is already well underway. UW-Milwaukee played their third series of the season over the weekend at BYU and is slated to open their home schedule on March 30, the day before what should have been MLB’s Opening Day. Minor League Baseball won’t be far behind, with their Opening Day scheduled for April 8, and the Milwaukee Milkmen’s American Association season is still expected to start with a home series on May 13.

For the duration of the MLB lockout, however, the best baseball in the world will likely be played on the other side of the Pacific. Well before the US-based majors started cancelling spring training report dates and games, work was already underway to prepare for 2022 seasons in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) and the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO).

Many baseball fans got a taste of the KBO during the 2020 season, when they were one of the first professional sports to return from the pandemic. While the rest of the sports world was on pause they even had English language broadcasts, with ESPN getting up early to cover a season that started with Eric Thames filling time during an Opening Day rain delay in May and ended with the NC Dinos posing with a giant sword after winning the Korea Series in September.

Options for Hardcore Fans

While it remains to be seen if the KBO will ever generate that level of American attention again, they are going to get another opportunity as one of the only viewing options for hardcore baseball fans. Their season is scheduled to start on Saturday, April 2, with a slate of 2 p.m. local time starts that will be 12 a.m. Saturday first pitches in the Central time zone. During the week most KBO games start at 6:30 p.m. local time, which is a 4:30 a.m. first pitch in the Central time zone. While the league’s TV deal with ESPN (and English language coverage of the KBO) ended after the 2020 season, in 2021 all games streamed for free via the NAVER app or by following the links on the daily schedule page at mykbostats.com.

Fans who make the commitment to get up early and watch KBO games may see a few familiar names, but probably not a lot: KBO teams are limited to just three players born outside of Korea. The players expected to play in the KBO in 2022 who have had the most MLB success include former Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig, former Marlins and Dodgers pitcher Odrisamer Despaigne and former Yankees pitcher Ivan Nova. While foreign players are relatively rare, they do tend to make an impact: The seven pitchers who threw the most innings in the KBO in 2021 were all imports.

Wild Swings

Because the KBO’s 10 teams have to fill out their rosters with exclusively Korean players, the organizational depth is not what U.S. fans might expect. This can lead to some wild swings in the late innings of games: While MLB teams increasingly are able to employ a revolving door of lights-out relievers, KBO teams do not have that volume of talent and so late comebacks are significantly more frequent.

Finally, while a potential new playoff structure has been a much-maligned part of MLB’s negotiations, the KBO has a unique format that seems to work: Five of the league’s 10 teams make the postseason but the better teams have a large advantage in the gauntlet-style playoff format where the winner of a matchup between teams #4 and 5 go on to play #3, with the winner then playing #2 and so on. The format has been very successful in rewarding regular season success, with the regular season’s best team going on to win the Korea Series in 18 of the last 20 seasons.

Obviously, all of the available options pale in comparison to what fans might expect if MLB games were going on as scheduled. While the sports world waits for the majors to come back, however, there’s plenty of baseball out there for those who want it.