The 2020 Major League Baseball season will kick off in about three weeks and Rob Manfred discussed the return to play with Dan Patrick on Wednesday.

Manfred told Patrick that throughout failed negotiations with the MLB Players Association, the league was set on a 60-game season.

"The reality is," Manfred said, "we weren't going to play more than 60 games no matter how the negotiations with the players went."

Patrick asked Manfred if he and the owners would have agreed to a longer season if the players had met the rest of the league's demands.

"We're playing sixty games in sixty-three days," the commissioner said. "I don't see, given the reality of the health situation over the past few weeks, how we were going to get going any faster than the calendar we're on right now. Look, we did get a sub-optimal result from the negotiations. The fans won't get an expanded postseason, which I think would have been good with the shortened season. The players left real money on the table. That's what happens when you have a negotiation that, instead of being collaborative, gets into a conflict situation."