Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) began play in Japan, expecting to play 120 of their usual 143 game season.
All games in Japan will be played without fans until at least July. The league has also revised the schedule to limit travel. There will be periodic testing and quarantines and, according to league guidelines, players will be banned from spitting.
Teams can dress 26 players and choose from 31 players on an active roster. Non-baseball staff will wear masks.
FoxSports.com
Most of the games in Japan are played indoors, which allows them to go deeper into the calendar. That might prevent them from filling seats, however, if a second wave SARS-CoV-2 hits.
Actually only half the stadiums in Japan are domes and one of them (the Seibu Dome) is open on the sides. They really can’t even backload the games since the Central League only has two domes and there’s no interleague this year. The new schedule runs into early November. It won’t surprise me if there are games that get postponed by weather and never get made up – especially since NPB typically doesn’t make up postponements until the last few weeks of the season.
Thanks.