COVID-19 Roundup: The First Player Has Tested Positive

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

With thousands of players in major and minor league camps this spring amid what has grown into a pandemic with nearly 170,000 confirmed cases worldwide, it was only a matter of time before professional baseball had its first player test positive for the novel coronavirus. That came to pass this weekend; on Sunday, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported that a Yankees minor leaguer has done so. The player in question, who did not spend any time this spring at the team’s major league camp a mile away in Tampa, Florida, has not been publicly identified, in accordance with HIPAA Privacy Rules.

Thus far among professional athletes, three NBA players — the Utah Jazz’s Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell, and the Pistons’ Christian Wood, the last of whom played against Gobert last Saturday and was diagnosed over the weekend — have tested positive. Gobert’s positive test led the NBA to suspend its season and set off a domino effect that led to other leagues and organizations suspending play as well, as governmental authorities moved to limit the size of gatherings well below thresholds that would allow sporting events to take place.

Per The Athletic’s Lindsey Adler, the minor leaguer in question was symptom-free as of Thursday, but woke up Friday feeling feverish and fatigued. After tests for influenza and strep throat came back negative, the player in question was quarantined. The team learned that his COVID-19 test was positive late Saturday night. Meanwhile, the minor league camp, which has been used by more than a hundred players on a daily basis this spring, was closed on Friday morning and underwent a “deep cleaning” on Sunday — not its first of the spring, according to general manager Brian Cashman. The major league facility will receive another such cleaning as well.

The Hillsborough County Department of Health has been advising the Yankees on how to proceed since the player reported symptoms. All Yankees minor leaguers are being quarantined for two weeks at a Tampa hotel, with food delivered to them in their rooms; they will be unable to train for the season during this time. The team’s player development staff, which includes coaches, is based at the minor league complex, has been directed to self-quarantine for two weeks. The player in question is not believed to have interacted with anybody on the major league side of the team.

Meanwhile, in a move that further suggests there will be no baseball for awhile — a lot longer than the two weeks by which the league postponed Opening Day on Thursday — MLB sent a memo to its clubs on Sunday, directing teams to send their minor league and non-roster players home if they don’t require medical treatment, aren’t headed to high-risk areas, or face difficulties in international travel; for players in those groups, clubs will work to provide suitable accommodations.

Players on 40-man rosters must be permitted to remain at the spring training complexes, where they will receive their per-diem allowances; the league anticipates more players leaving “as events continue to unfold and players become better educated about current conditions.” However, organized group workouts are prohibited. “The strong recommendation from our infectious disease and public health experts is that Clubs should avoid all activities in which players congregate in significant numbers or are otherwise unable to practice the ‘social distancing’ protocols recommended by the CDC [Center for Disease Control and Prevention, more on which below],” wrote deputy commissioner Dan Halem in the memo. Here’s the full document:

The full memo Major League Baseball has sent to teams about spring training: pic.twitter.com/LihlK1F2C6

— Evan Drellich (@EvanDrellich) March 15, 2020

Via Drelich and his Athletic colleague Ken Rosenthal, the memo is a reaction to tension between the players’ union and the league, a move to provide greater uniformity given teams’ uneven approaches to the situation, and the haste of some clubs, such as the Marlins — of course, the Marlins — to quickly shut down camps in violation of agreements between the league and the union. Commissioner Rob Manfred is scheduled to talk to all teams on Monday at noon ET.

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“For a while, life is not going to be the way it used to be in the United States,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on CNN on Sunday, effectively endorsing a national lockdown, “a dramatic diminution of the personal interaction that we see.” Later on Sunday, the CDC recommended that for the next eight weeks — in other words, through May 10 — organizers “cancel or postpone in-person events that consist of 50 people or more throughout the United States.” That would include weddings, funerals, graduations, concerts, conferences, and of course, sporting events. If that recommendation holds, and if a mini-spring training were to begin immediately afterwards, we might not see regular season baseball before June. So it goes.

(Colleague Craig Edwards has a look at the number of games teams could play depending upon when the season actually starts.)

The CDC recommendation does not apply to “the day to day operation of organizations such as schools, institutes of higher learning, or businesses,” though around the country, in hot spots such as New York City, Los Angeles, and Seattle, many schools are closing, possibly for the remainder of the academic year. The concern right now is the possibility of an Italy-like trajectory in which hospitals are overwhelmed and death rates soar. In New York City, for example, this dire warning from data scientist Michael Donnelly advocated “more severe social distancing measures and potentially fully shut down” the city by March 21. Donnelly’s projections circulated through the offices of New York City Council members. By the end of Sunday, New York City mayor Bill De Blasio announced that the city’s public schools would be closed through at least April 20. Hours later, he added that restaurants, cafes, and bars would be limited to takeout and delivery options, with nightclubs, theaters, and movie venues all closing as well.

No doubt similar decisions are being made all around the country if not the world. For as much of a bummer as it is to contemplate the next month or so without baseball and other professional sports, it’s an even bigger one to adjust to the reality of forgoing so many basics of social interaction — meals out with family, drinks at a bar or a club, movies on a date. We’re all going to be doing a lot of Netflix — and Amazon Prime, and Hulu, and Disney+, and so on — and chill for the next several weeks.

Speaking of social distancing and Netflix-and-chilling, the SABR Analytics Conference that took place over the weekend was sparsely attended given everything else going on around it, but the organization live-streamed its panels and presentations via YouTube. Friday’s stream is here and Saturday’s is here, with Sunday’s pending at this writing; timestamps in the comments will guide you to the individual events. This scribe took part in an hour-long panel on Saturday morning panel, “The Changing Baseball: What We Know, What We Think We Know, and What It Means” with Baseball Prospectus‘ Rob Arthur, SMT’s Meredith Wills, and moderator Mike Ferrin. Of the quartet, only Wills was present in person, but we managed to have a lively and hopefully informative discussion which begins at the 8:55 mark in the Saturday stream.

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A few more stories worth linking:

– Illich Holdings, which among other things owns the Tigers, the NHL’s Detroit Red Wings, Little Caeser’s Pizza, and Little Caesar’s Arena, home of the Red Wings and the NBA’s Detroit Pistons, became the first of the MLB owners to step forward and publicly commit to paying part-time and hourly staff while play is suspended, albeit only for the next month. Via the Detroit News, the group set up a $1 million fund to cover “four Red Wings home games, eight Pistons home games, six Tigers spring-training games in Lakeland, Fla., as well as concert and special-event employees. It doesn’t cover lost Tigers games at Comerica Park.” It’s not clear yet if the fund covers third-party employees such as those who work in food and beverage services at Little Caesar’s Arena and Comerica Park.

A handful of owners in other sports, starting with the Dallas Mavericks’ Mark Cuban, have stepped forward with similar plans as well. Jerry Reinsdorf, in his capacity as chairman of the NBA’s Chicago Bulls, made a joint announcement with Rocky Witz, chairman of the NHL’s Chicago Blackhawks, to pay the staff of the United Center, which they share — along with approximately 1,200 game-day employees — through the remainder of their originally scheduled seasons. Reindsorf has not announced plans to cover workers for the White Sox at either Guaranteed Rate Field in Chicago or at Camelback Ranch, which they share with the Dodgers in Arizona. As Rosenthal noted in a piece at The Athletic, most MLB teams are still formulating their responses, though their immediate focus is on settling their players and staffs. Said Dodgers president Stan Kasten, “We’re mindful of the problem. We’re looking at ways to help people get through these times. But we don’t have a plan just yet.”

– Following the lead of Bulls star Kevin Love, Astros outfielder George Springer pledged $100,000 of his own to employees at Houston’s Minute Maid Park. Astros third baseman Alex Bregman pledged 1,000 quarantine food kits to the Houston Food Bank, ensuring that students who normally receive free lunches at school will be fed while their schools are closed; each kit contains 28 meals. Reds pitcher Trevor Bauer set up a GoFundMe for MLB stadium staff that has thus far raised over $22,000.

– The Athletic’s Keith Law examines the ramifications of canceled amateur games on the upcoming draft in June. A couple of excerpts:

“I can’t imagine college baseball and high schools play the rest of this year,” said one VP who oversees amateur scouting for his team. “If that’s the case, and we resume (professional) baseball around May 1, I’d advocate to move the draft up so we could get some kids out for extended and short-season,” meaning that players who were drafted this year would play more in pro ball than draftees typically do. Most teams shut pitchers down, or have them throw extremely limited innings, because their spring workloads were often quite high. That would no longer apply if the amateur levels don’t return to the field. “If, for some crazy reason, we have the opportunity to see them more, then I say move the draft back.

…“You don’t start scouting for the draft in February; you start a year in advance,” says Al Avila, the General Manager of the Detroit Tigers, who hold the first overall pick in this year’s draft. “We already have over 600 reports, with video, so we have up to date rankings from our software system. If the draft were tomorrow, we would be ready to go, we’d have our first pick ready, we’d still meet and have conversations, but based on the information we have right now we could draft tomorrow and draft well.””

Our resident prospect expert Eric Longenhagen plans to take up the issue soon at FanGraphs, so be on the lookout for that and the balance of our Top Prospect lists.

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We’ll be back with more tomorrow. In the meantime, please stay safe, follow the social distancing and quarantining guidelines, and wash your hands.