The Australian Baseball League presented its layout for the 2020/2021 season. There will be two leagues: An Australian Conference and an International Conference. Besides this a surprise may be in the making.
The Australian Conference will contain the following teams: defending champion Melbourne Aces, Sydney Blue Sox, Canberra Cavalry and Perth Heat.
The International Conference will contain: Auckland Tuatara, Geelong-Korea, Brisbane Bandits, Adelaide Giants and perhaps another international team.
The teams of the Australian Conference will face each other in a home and road series. The teams of the International Conference will mainly play in Auckland that will serve as a hub. Brisbane and Adelaide both will host one series outside New Zealand.
All teams will play twenty-four games. The games played in the Australian Conference will last nine innings, the ones in the International Conference seven. If the International Conference will contain four teams, each opponent will face the other eight times. In case a fifth team is added, the teams will face each other six times.
Interleague games will be out of the question in the upcoming season.
Regarding the fifth team of the New Zealand hub and the ninth of the ABL talks have been going on with parties from Japan and Taiwan and even MLB. As talks are still going on, the schedule of the International Conference cannot be released yet. The schedule of the Australian Conference has been released in the meantime.
With the current landscape due to the COVID19 virus, it is still unclear if the ABL season can take off. As a result, the season is cut short drastically.
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