MLB - NEWS & NOTES

The rogue ball is actually never hit.

 

Why do you hate fun?

 

Ryan Zimmerman, Mike Leake and Ian Desmond have opted to not play baseball in 2020 do to the Pandemic. Probably just the tip of the iceberg as I expect others to follow suit. This is still a dangerous situation in my opinion.

 

71 players and 12 staffers have tested positive for Covid-19...

 

Opening Day is next week and the Jays dont have a home, wow. Thanks Ottawa.

 

At least the Jays are scheduled to open on the road, so they buy a little time to figure things out.

 

Jays and PNC park in Pittsburgh are considering hosting Blue Jays home games per reports that surfaced last night. I dont see that happening, but what the hell do I know. - They gotta play somewhere.

 

Pennsylvania said NO, to the Blue Jays...

 

They should honestly play in Syracuse or something since they have a good field with LED lights. A shitty Stadium for seats but no one is gonna watch them anyways. Then they can have their reserves in Buffalo.

 

Opening Day in the MLB... finally.

 

BREAKING: Eight more Miami players test positive, Marlins home opener cancelled

Jeff Passan of ESPN reports that our worst fears have been realized: eight more players and two coaches with the Miami Marlins have tested positive for COVID-19. This in addition to the four who were sidelined with positive tests over the weekend. As a result, the Marlins home opener against the Baltimore Orioles has been cancelled. The club is remaining in Philadelphia, in quarantine.

This development is a dire. And not just for the Marlins home opener or even for the health of those who have tested positive for COVID-19. It, as we wrote earlier this morning, puts the viability of the entire season in question.

It also shines the spotlight on Rob Manfred.

As we noted earlier today, Rob Manfred and Rob Manfred alone has the power to cancel games or shut down operations if COVID-19 begins to pose a serious risk to players and those surrounding them. Yesterday the Marlins took the field despite more than 10% of their active roster having already tested positive and despite the fact that the results of several COVID-19 tests for their teammates remained outstanding. How many of those players had close contact with Phillies players? With stadium staff? With bus drivers? With hotel staff? Why, when a big chunk of the roster was already positive and more tests were outstanding, were they allowed to circulate freely like this? These are questions Rob Manfred is morally and ethically obligated to address. This is especially true given that multiple epidemiologists characterized the decision to allow the Marlins to play yesterday as irresponsible even before knowing how many more players had been infected.

Major League Baseball premised the very idea of playing baseball during this pandemic on adherence to strict health protocols and claimed, over and over, to consider the health of players, team and stadium workers, support staff, and their loved ones its top priority. Now that an entire team has been sidelined less than five days after the season’s first pitch — and now that having allowed them to play looks like a horrible idea — Major League Baseball must explain why it shouldn’t suspend all operations immediately.

NBC

 

It just puts the viability in question? I think it shows how unstable this whole situation is for MLB. A couple more players on a few more teams and there will be a lot of postponed games which may not get made up later on.....which then impacts win/loss records which impacts the whole playoff situation and that's not even considering the fairness of strength (and length) of schedules. As a whole, I think this recent rash of Covid infections will grow and sound the death knell for this 2020 MLB season. Even if this doesn't get a whole lot worse, it doesn't bode well for an NCAA football or NFL season being played in its entirety or even at all.

 

I'm giving the season two weeks at the most. What happened with the Marlins and the reaction to it is a good indicator of the mindset that MLB will have. We'll see some more cases and then that will be it.

 

Rob Manfred: “We believe the protocols are adequate to keep our players safe”

The same day that ten members of the Miami Marlins tested positive for COVID-19 — days after four others were sidelined as well — Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred said that he believed that MLB’s anti-COVID-19 system is working and that “We believe the protocols are adequate to keep our players safe.”

In an interview with Tom Verducci, he pushed back on the notion that the Marlins situation — which caused two postponements yesterday, at least one today, and the quarantining of the entire Miami club — is a “nightmare scenario.” Manfred:

“I don’t put this in the nightmare category. It’s not a positive thing, but I don’t see it as a nightmare . . . that’s why we have the expanded rosters. That’s why we have the pool of additional players . . . I remain optimistic the protocols are strong enough that it will allow us to continue to play even through an outbreak like this and complete our season.”

Manfred did not talk about the reason Miami was allowed to play the Phillies on Sunday despite four positive tests then and unknown results pending. Results which, as we learned yesterday, ended up containing a rash of positives. As was reported yesterday, that decision was not coordinated with Major League Baseball, the MLBPA or with public health experts or doctors. Rather, the decision to play was left up to the Marlins players who engaged in a group text in which shortstop Miguel Rojas made the call.

Earlier in the month Manfred was interviewed by Dan Patrick about what may lead the league to shut things down. Here’s what he said:

“I don’t have a firm number of days in mind (to pause the season). I think the way that I think about it, Dan, is in the vein of competitive integrity, in a 60-game season. If we have a team or two that’s really decimated with a number of people who had the virus and can’t play for any significant period of time, it could have a real impact on the competition and we’d have to think very, very hard about what we’re doing.”

One would think that would describe the Marlins situation, but apparently not. In the absence of Manfred explaining the specific thought process of Sunday and Monday, one gets the distinct impression that he’s doing all of this on a reactive, ad-hoc basis.

The most immediate result of that ad-hoc approach: Manfred’s suggestion that the Marlins might play games in Baltimore as early as tomorrow, with all of those reserves from the 60-man player pool he spoke of stepping up to fill holes. Here’s what an epidemiologist Ken Rosenthal and Jayson Stark of The Athletic spoke to thought of that:

This is absolutely insane . . . if possible, the literal stupidest possible plan. You have a raging outbreak, anyone in the Marlins traveling party could be infected regardless of how their tests come back. So by all means, just bring that on the road to Baltimore! . . . At a minimum, you have to shut down for at least five days to see if more cases uncover. And you need to wait because you could have ongoing transmission from cases that are newly discovered tomorrow or the next day. You could still have more come from chains of transmission from those people after that. So there’s no cure but time here, unfortunately.”

Time, however, is not something it seems Rob Manfred is willing to give when there are games to be broadcast.

NBC