Dodgers to open 2020 season at Dodger Stadium vs Giants, per report

The Los Angeles Dodgers could start the 2020 season against their biggest rival.

While changes could be made to the draft schedule being considered by Major League Baseball, based on the current iteration, the Los Angeles Dodgers will host the San Francisco Giants on Opening Day in late July, just as the original 162-game schedule had planned, according to Henry Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Dodgers were supposed to open the season on March 26 in an afternoon affair against the Giants. Obviously, that never happened, as MLB was shutdown from mid-March until July 1 in response to the novel coronavirus and financial wrangling between the owners and players.

The 2020 season is now set to begin on July 23 or July 24.

The Los Angeles Dodgers 2020 schedule should be released in the next week or so.

The official schedule is not expected to be released until next week, as it is subject to review by the teams and could change based on the path of the coronavirus pandemic.

While the final details need to be sorted out, the structure of the schedule is already known. The Dodgers will play their National League West opponents ten times each, their inter-city rival Angels six times, and then 14 games will be split between the rest of the teams in the American League West.

Fans were hoping the league would consider opening the schedule with the Dodgers playing the Astros, but that doesn’t appear to be in the cards.

The Dodgers announced the initial list of players who will be included in their 60-man player pool on Sunday. They listed only 51 names to give them some flexibility in deciding who should join the group of non-40-man-roster players who will workout at an alternate site during the season.

Players are expected to report for “summer camp” on July 1. They will all be tested for the coronavirus on that date, with workouts beginning on July 3. Dave Roberts recently said on the Joe and Orel podcast that he doesn’t expect to stagger the start date for pitchers and catchers versus positional players.