COVID-19 Roundup: Watching for the Second Wave

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

Second Wave of COVID-19 Infections

The biggest sports news of the week, affecting everything from baseball to tennis, isn’t sports-related at all. Wrapped up in some of the economic turmoil between MLB and the MLBPA is the concern of many owners over a second wave of COVID-19 derailing the playoffs. (The bigger worry is the risk that a second wave will derail a 2020 season in its entirety.) Americans have largely moved on from peak coronavirus watchfulness and cities that didn’t bear the brunt of the initial wave, such as San Antonio and Houston, are seeing new case count peaks in recent days. Even if a second wave proves not to be severe enough to cut down the 2020 season, MLB may need to re-think things like game location on the fly, meaning it’s crucial they reach an agreement on the economic issues quickly.

Commissioner Rob Manfred said on Day 1 of the draft that he was 100 percent sure that there would be baseball in 2020. This should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt, given that the commish and the owners also claim that every game plays loses them $640,000.

The NFL Officially Suspends Minicamps

In a move that was long expected, the NFL officially suspended minicamp through the end of June and extended the “virtual offseason” to June 26. Mike Vrabel, the head coach of the Titans, was optimistic about training camp opening early in July, enough so that he ended the team’s virtual offseason two weeks before the June 26 deadline.

Meanwhile, Ravens coach Jim Harbaugh is not optimistic about the feasibility of the NFL’s COVID-19 plans:

“I’ve seen all the memos on that, and to be quire honest with you, it’s impossible what they’re asking to do. Humanly impossible,” he said.

“We’re going to do everything we can do. We’re going to space, we’re going to have masks. But, you know, it’s a communication sport. We have to be able to communicate with each other in person. We have to practice.”

NBA Players Not Unanimous on Return

While the NBA has been very happy to emphasize reports that NBA players overwhelmingly favor finishing the season, not every player is on board with the current plans. ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reports that there’s a group of players who are not happy with the plan to resume the season in Orlando:

Sources: As NBA and NBPA are finalizing terms on return-to-play plan today, there’s a faction of players discussing as a group whether restarting season in the Orlando bubble is a good idea. Several dozen players participated in a conference call in last 24 hours to discuss it.

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) June 10, 2020

The league’s agreement with the Players Association has focused on allowing players to be able to opt-out of playing games, even without direct medical reasons, with replacement players brought in for the players leaving.

In additional, the “Disney season” won’t be a strict quarantine as Disney staffers, who will support the NBA’s reboot in Orlando, will not be quarantined at the Disney complex. Staffers will be subject to general safety protocols such as face masks and temperature checks as agreed to in the union’s June 14 agreement with Disney.

Dr. Zachary Binney, adjunct instructor in Epidemiology at Emory University Rollins School of Public Health and sports injury epidemiology consultant, and one of two epidemiologists Tom Haberstroh spoke with, does not believe this is an insurmountable issue.

“The NBA players and staff will likely be in contact with each other a lot more than the Disney staff will be,” Binney says. “I think symptom checks would probably do enough to reduce it down to an acceptable risk level. This is not something I would have said two months ago, but we’re learning that the risk of person-to-object-to-person transmission is not a very common group. Person-to-person is a much bigger deal.”

A basketball related aside: The German Bundesliga Basketball League has an unusual and interesting approach to contact tracing for their players: using their player tracking partner, KINEXON. I don’t envision StatCast ever having the infrastructure for this kind of thing, but I appreciate creative ways to keep players healthy without spreading the disease.

People Still Like Baseball!

If for some reason you have the sense that the public isn’t pining for the return of sports, allow Monmouth University’s poll of 807 adults on the question disabuse you of that notion. It may be skewed because this isn’t March or November, but 56% of the fans who said they miss sports a lot or a little picked baseball as the sport they missed most. Baseball had the plurality among all party identifications, ideologies, age groups, and genders, and while white respondents were more likely to say they miss baseball than respondents of color, the disparity was only five percentage points (27% vs. 22%). Maybe baseball could actually find itself some new fans if it were the first of the major sports to start up in July.

What’s more, the MLB draft averaged 615,000 viewers, with draft-related engagement on social media up 21 percent from 2019. It’s not the NFL draft, but it’s good to see an increasing number of people take interest in the MLB’s future.

Blue Jays Still Planning 2020 Home

Resuming the 2020 season will require every team to navigate around a lot of obstacles, but the Blue Jays have one more. Namely, with the various Arizona-Florida-Texas plans failing to come to fruition, the Blue Jays don’t actually know yet where they could play games in 2020. The border between the United States and Canada remains closed for non-essential travel and while I personally feel that baseball is essential, I’m in the distinct minority. The current restrictions are set to expire on June 21, but are expected to be extended.

Some of the options include Toronto playing at another major league stadium, at Sahlen Field, the hometown of the team’s Triple-A affiliate Buffalo Bisons, or at the team’s spring training complex in Dunedin, Florida.

Lindor Donation Connects the Dots

Francisco Lindor, who already has a relationship with the New Balance shoe brand, made a donation of 150 pairs of shoes to hospital workers treating COVID-19 patients. It’s not the first piece of equipment people think of when they consider the needs of health care providers, but I know from my sister, who treats oncology patients, some of whom have COVID-19, that shoes get worn down and essential for hospital staff.

Why the header? There’s a little tidbit in that WKYC piece that Lindor’s favorite board game is Connect Four. Play apparently gets “intense because [he doesn’t] like losing.” For people of a certain age, it’s hard to read that sentence without thinking of the iconic 1980s commercial.