When will the 2020 MLB campaign start? How many games will they play? + more FanPulse results...

Welcome to SB Nation FanPulse, a survey of fans across MLB. Each week, we send 30 polls to plugged in fans from each team. Nationals fans, sign up HERE to join FanPulse.

The scheduled start of the 2020 Major League Baseball campaign was postponed earlier this month, due to concerns about the ongoing (and growing) COVID-19/coronavirus pandemic, and MLB’s Commissioner, Rob Manfred, said earlier this week that he’s hoping that baseball starts building towards the new season at some point in May. But when will they actually start playing baseball again?

MLB and the MLBPA reached an agreement on a lot of the details on how the 2020 season will be handled on Thursday night, and it was ratified by major league owners on Friday, so now we all just have to wait for word on when we can return to some semblance of normal life and actually, eventually, get baseball back. It might be a while, so hang in there...

SB Nation’s FanPulse voters were asked a series of questions about that state of the game at the start of this week.

Will there be a 2020 season? When will baseball return? Will fans be in the stands when it does return? How many games will they actually play when/if the season does start?

That last question was an interesting one... 77% of the SB Nation FanPulse voters are super-confident there will actually be games played this season, though that leaves 23% who are realists/pessimists who aren’t sure it will happen if things take a turn for the worse and the virus doesn’t allow for things to get started...

Those who believe believe that the season will start at some point this year, are pointing towards the month of June as the likeliest starting point...

There were a number of voters guessing things will start in July (35%), but June voters took it (38%), while 11% said May, and 16% of the voters think baseball will return in April of 2021, which, yeah, if that’s so, we might quit rather than try to fill that content void.

If they do play this season, how many games are voters expecting they’ll be able to play?

The majority of voters (52%) are expecting the season will consist of 90 or fewer games, with 38% expecting 92-120, 8% looking at 121-150 games, and 1% saying 150+, though in reports on the MLB and MLBPA agreement, both sides expressed a desire to play as many games as possible, potentially extending the regular season through October with a real possibility of playing the World Series at a neutral warm-weather site later in the Fall...

Finally, the last question this week was about whether or not fans will be in attendance at the major league parks when/if baseball returns... apparently a lot of voters are optimistic that there will be fans in the ballparks if they eventually play...

Thoughts on any or all of the above? Share them in the comments section below...

Where are you on these questions? If you didn’t participate in the FanPulse survey the first three weeks, you can still sign up above or HERE.