My hope for the Francis-Hurdle Affair is this:
-- Francis has filed his appeal of the 5-game suspension.
-- Francis (through the union) to MLB: "We'll drop our appeal and Jeff will agree to serve his suspension from Games 3 through 7 of the season."
-- MLB: "Deal."
I don't think this is how it's supposed to work. MLB has plenty of time to actually decide the appeal before the regular season starts, in which case Francis would probably miss his scheduled Game 2 start.
But I suspect that in the real world this kind of negotiation happens all the time ... if that's the case here, the impact of the suspension will be minimal.
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