COVID-19 Roundup: Choo, Murphy Donate to the Minors

This is the latest installment of a daily series in which the FanGraphs staff rounds up the latest developments regarding the COVID-19 virus’ effect on baseball.

Shin-Soo Choo Gives Back

Shin-Soo Choo is donating $1,000 to each Rangers minor leaguer, nearly 200 players in total. For minor leaguers scraping to get by, every dollar counts, and Choo mentioned his time in the minors as a motivating factor for the donation. Choo had already donated nearly $200,000 to Community Chest of Korea to help with pandemic relief in Daegu, one of the hardest-hit cities in South Korea.

Daniel Murphy Does Too

Last week, Adam Wainwright made a $250,000 donation to More Than Baseball, a charity that supports all minor leaguers. Yesterday, Daniel Murphy added $100,000 to that total, making the donation to a joint effort between More Than Baseball and Our Baseball Life, a charity that provides support and resources for baseball playing families. The fund will support minor leaguers with families, a particularly vulnerable group during the work stoppage.

Wimbledon Canceled

The All England Club announced that it will cancel the Wimbledon Championships for the first time since World War II. Tennis tournaments are a trickier logistical undertaking than baseball games, given their international player- and fan-base, and the tournament was scheduled to start on June 29, too soon to expect the return of safe international travel.

NWSL Green Shoots

On the other hand, the NWSL is working towards a late-June return. Commissioner Lisa Baird made it clear that the date isn’t set in stone, but that date now sets an early window for when sports might return.

The NWSL features nine teams and draws crowds in the 10,000-20,000 person range, which means that it will need clear guidelines on public gatherings before playing games again. Watching to see if and how this scheduled date is postponed might hint at MLB’s eventual start date.

Florida, Georgia Stay Home

Florida has been a hotbed for COVID-19 cases of late, with nearly 1,000 new cases on Tuesday alone. Governor Ron DeSantis issued a statewide stay-at-home order yesterday, covering the next 30 days. The order matches those seen in many other states; it allows only essential businesses to remain open, and prohibits travel except for necessities, and to and from those businesses. Florida is among the hardest-hit states, with its tourism-based economy both spreading the virus and making state officials hesitant to curb travel out of fear of damaging the economy. Thankfully, they have finally decided that human lives come first.

Georgia, which has reported nearly 5,000 COVID-19 cases in total, has followed suit. Their shelter-in-place order, however, extends only to April 13, and doesn’t go into effect until tomorrow, making it only 10 days in length, far shorter than most other states’ restrictions, and also shorter than the 14-day quarantine recommended for people with potential exposure. The order also closed schools for the remainder of the year, a formality that most expected to happen sooner or later.

Georgia had faced criticism from local authorities and public health experts over to its conflicting directions, alternately telling municipal governments to take charge and accusing them of overreach. The new order is unlikely to clear much up; it’s 17 days shorter in length than the federal government’s April 30 guidance for when it might be safe to return to business as normal. (Also concerning is Governor Kemp’s admission that he only recently learned asymptomatic people can transmit the virus.) Still, standardization is welcome, even if it might need to be extended later, as is any effort to help flatten the curve.

California Teams File Notice

The Athletic reports that the Giants, Padres, Dodgers, and Angels sent employees notice that job cuts might be forthcoming. California companies are required to give notice in writing before any mass layoffs, though that restriction has been temporarily relaxed — the warning previously needed to be 60 days in advance, and now must only be done “as soon as is reasonably possible.”

Representatives from the four teams that sent notice said that they weren’t currently planning any layoffs. Three of the teams sent these notices to all their employees, both part-time gameday employees and full-time staff, while the Giants sent it only to part-timers. While the teams may not currently be planning layoffs, those notices are an unwelcome reminder to the affected workers that their jobs aren’t safe from furlough or termination.