For many fans, the sports seasons have a natural, almost circadian rhythm. Baseball season ends, football is in full swing, and hockey and basketball begin. The come the NFL playoffs and Super Bowl, and when those are complete, it’s basically time for spring training. But will the rhythm be interrupted in 2021?

Evan Drellich of The Athletic believes spring training 2021 may start on time, which, at least to me, comes as a surprise.

We’ve heard rumblings that the owners may want to delay spring training and the 2021 season for a few reasons. One of those reasons is to wait for players to be vaccinated against COVID-19 without “jumping the line.” The other reason, from the owners’ perspective, seems even more compelling. The owners lost money in the shortened 2020 season with no fans in the stands, and they’d prefer to delay games until vaccinated fans can return, at least to partial capacity, sometime in the mid to late spring.

Drellich points out that delaying the season is not a unilateral decision the owners can make because of the collective bargaining agreement between the owners and the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA). In fact, the only way the season can be delayed with the players’ consent would be if the governors of Florida and Arizona declare a state of emergency and therefore prohibit spring training from taking place.

That seems unlikely, and it seems equally unlikely that the players would agree to a delay in the season that would result in a reduction of their 2021 salaries. The players can point to the start of other sports seasons (basketball and hockey, although both are being shortened) and the continuation of the NFL season as reasons to justify starting on time, even as cases of COVID-19 are spiking, and a new variant of the virus has been identified in the United States.

It remains to be seen how a 162 game season could be accomplished in 2021. MLB has published a schedule that assumes normalcy, meaning teams will play against all teams in their leagues, and the regionalization of the 2020 season will not be repeated. This would require more travel, which could in turn lead to outbreaks in cases.

With so few off days in a typical major league season, how could teams make up 10, 15, or 20 games that could be lost to COVID-19? If teams do not play the same number of games, the integrity of the postseason is automatically in question, and then there’s the question of whether or not players get paid for missed games.

Another factor to consider the expiration of MLB’s collective bargaining agreement with the MLBPA at the end of this season. Could the owners and/or the players use the construct of the 2021 season as a bargaining chip in the negotiations toward a new CBA?

There are a lot of issues to be sorted out in the next six weeks, as pitchers and catchers are scheduled to report to spring training in mid-February. The Mets’ first grapefruit league game is scheduled for February 27th. Will it take place on that date?

The hope could be that with new vaccines on the horizon and improved distribution, fans may be able to attend games close to the planned start of the 2021 season (April 1st). With that possibility, perhaps a delay in spring training will not be necessary.

As fans, we don’t want a delay in the start of the season. Even more, we don’t want to see another round of public acrimony between the players and owners over when the season starts, prorated pay, etc.

Time (and maybe the lawyers on both sides) will tell just when we will see baseball in 2021.