Scott Hatteberg believes 2020 MLB season will be ‘really tough' to pull off

Share

Scott Hatteberg forever will be linked to the A’s team that won 20 games in a row during the 2002 season, an achievement that would eventually be featured in a Hollywood film.

Hatteberg recently stopped by the NBC Sports Bay Area baseball podcast Balk Talk to talk about that, but he also talked about the current state of baseball. After the recent positive coronavirus tests that took over the Miami Marlins, could we have a full 60-game season?

“To cut to the end, I’m glad they’re playing,” Hatteberg said in an interview on Balk Talk. “I know it’s a difficult decision, it’s so individual, and everybody’s situation is different and there’s risk that others don’t have.”

Hatteberg, being a former player himself after 14 seasons in the league, knows what it’s like to be worried if a guy would have to opt-out, or anything related were to happen, it could feel as if he was letting the team down, but there are still concerns there.

“I talked to Billy Beane just the other day, and it’s going to be really tough to pull this season off, I mean, the Marlins are already showing what can happen and this was talked about,” Hatteberg said. “So how they end up doing it, I know they’re trying to take every precaution, but I do not envy the people making decisions.” 

Hatteberg is still working with the A’s as the special assistant to baseball operations, which has him scouting, among other things, but admitted since the coronavirus pandemic, things have been different. While he’s used to driving around Mississippi or similar areas, he has to do everything from home. That means watching film, which has a lot of disadvantages.

“That was an interesting thing this year because there was no college baseball, there was really no high school baseball, so we watched a ton of video and wrote reports on that, and with the condensed draft, we had to kind of roll the dice that way,” Hatteberg said.

[RELATED: Willis, Morse joke about playing for Marlins again]

But the lack of driving around for long periods of times, and no longer taking 6:00 a.m. flights, were certainly a plus with everything going on, Hatteberg admitted, though he misses the advantage of seeing certain things with the naked eye -- all the film in the world might not be able to help him in that department.

You can listen to that, and the rest of the interview on Balk Talk here. 

[BALK TALK: Listen to the latest episode]
 

Contact Us