Marlins’ Outbreak Produces a Full-Blown Crisis for MLB
Less than a week into the 2020 regular season, Major League Baseball has a full-blown crisis on its hands, as the Miami Marlins are in the midst of a COVID-19 outbreak that threatens their ability to field a competitive team and calls into question the league’s entire return-to-play effort. On Sunday, the Marlins played the Phillies without three of their regulars or their scheduled starting pitcher, all of whom had tested positive for the coronavirus. On Monday morning, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported that eight more players and two coaches had tested positive as well, and on Tuesday The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reported four additional players testing positive, bringing the total number of cases over the last five days to 17. Monday and Tuesday’s games involving both the Marlins (who were to play their home opener against the Orioles) and Phillies (who were to host the Yankees) have been postponed, and more may follow.
Needless to say, this is not good.
Even before the Marlins’ outbreak came to light, MLB was unable to make it to the first official pitch of the regular season without a star player testing positive and being scratched from the Opening Day lineup amid questions about testing turnaround time and the protocol for handling exposed players. About five hours before the Yankees’ Aaron Hicks stepped in against Max Scherzer at Nationals Park last Thursday, Washington left fielder Juan Soto was pulled from the lineup due to a lab-confirmed positive test off a saliva sample taken on Sunday — four days earlier — igniting fears that other Nationals had been exposed in the time since he had provided the sample on Tuesday. That Soto had tested negative on three subsequent instant-result tests (both saliva and nasal) further muddied the waters.
The Nationals did not quarantine any additional players after contact tracing Soto’s infection, having determined that “no players or staff were deemed to have met the CDC definition of close contact” — staying within six feet for at least 15 minutes — with Soto. Thankfully, the 20-year-old slugger is reportedly asymptomatic and has received the first of two lab-confirmed negative tests necessary for his return; he will also have to go 72 hours without exhibiting symptoms. The rest of the Nationals reportedly tested negative as of Saturday, and at this writing, the team has reported no further infections.
As for the Marlins, though they hail from a state that has become the epicenter of the pandemic, the team had not experienced a disproportionate number of positive tests between the start of their summer camp and the approach of Opening Day, with only outfielders Lewis Brinson and Matt Joyce landing on the injured list due to undisclosed reasons as of July 16. On Friday, however, just before the their first game against the Phillies in Philadelphia, the Marlins placed catcher Jorge Alfaro on the injured list for undisclosed reasons. Then, about an hour before Sunday’s game, MLB Network’s Jon Heyman reported that scheduled starting pitcher José Ureña had been scratched due to a positive test. The game proceeded nonetheless, and Heyman soon followed up with a report that first baseman/designated hitter Garrett Cooper and right fielder Harold Ramirez — both of whom had started the team’s first two games — had tested positive as well, as had Alfaro.
That the Marlins and Phillies took the field despite so many positives is itself alarming; that the decision for Miami to play apparently ran through veteran shortstop Miguel Rojas, whom manager Don Mattingly described as “an unofficial team captain” all the more so. Nowhere in MLB’s 2020 Operations Manual does it say anything about player sentiment or the judgment of the team’s most respected veteran. Per the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Matt Breen, Mattingly said of Rojas, “He’s always texting the group and getting the feelings of the group. So when we’re dealing with situations or things, that’s usually who we’re working through.” Mattingly added that the team “never really considered not playing” on Sunday. Likewise, Rojas said that not playing “was never the mentality,” adding, “We knew that this would happen at some point. We came to the ballpark and we were ready to play. That was never our thought that we weren’t going to play.”
[UPDATE: Heyman reported that Rojas is among the players in Tuesday’s wave of positive tests, a further reminder that players are not qualified to serve as epidemiologists.]
While the difficulties of running a 30-team league during a pandemic owe plenty to matters beyond baseball — an administration that has politicized a public health crisis and provided scant leadership at the federal level, and shortages of tests and personal protective equipment, for starters — there are enough burning questions here to for MLB to feel the heat. Among them, why did the decision to play Sunday’s game remain in the hands of a team rather than the league? What is the threshold of infections to shut down a team, and for how long? Did all of this stem from a single infected player in the Marlins’ clubhouse, or did it come from outside the team — contracted from another opponent, or while traveling? If it came from a single Marlins player, then how can MLB believe that the protocols it has in place are enough to keep players safe and healthy, and to prevent other teams from experiencing similar outbreaks?
As to the first question, via Breen:
The opinion shared in the group chat was the same as the opinion of the Marlins organization, as both parties thought the team took enough precaution to play Sunday’s game. Those opinions were then provided to the joint committee of Major League Baseball and the players’ union, which is tasked with the day-to-day oversight of the monitoring and testing plan.
Those precautions apparently included informing the Phillies, who per manager Joe Girardi believed that the Marlins had followed the proper protocols. Phillies players were urged to take precautions; Bryce Harper wore a mask while running the bases, while Rhys Hoskins wore one while playing first base. Didi Gregorius, who’s considered a high-risk player due to a kidney condition, has been wearing masks at all times while playing the field. Here it’s worth noting that as critical as masks may be for reducing the spread of the coronavirus in general, they are more effective as source control — in preventing the wearer from infecting others, rather than in shielding the wearer from infection.
Per The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal and Jayson Stark, sources familiar with MLB protocols “said that the league had done full contact tracing following the first positive test, tested all remaining Marlins players and based the decision not to intervene in part on the fact that no other players tested positive or reported symptoms.” That reasoning alarmed the two infectious disease experts The Athletic consulted, both of whom expected that the threshold for postponing Sunday’s game would have been met, and cautioning that it would take longer than a day to determine the extent of the outbreak. Dr. John Swartzburg, a clinical professor emeritus at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health, Division of Infectious Disease, suggested that if 10% of the traveling group has tested positive, there exists a high probability of further positives among the group, as players who had not tested positive may be incubating the virus. In this case, they may have exposed players on the Phillies, and possibly the Braves, whom the Marlins faced in an exhibition in Atlanta last Wednesday; here we should note that Georgia is itself a coronavirus hotbed, and that Braves catchers Travis d’Arnaud and Tyler Flowers were both placed on the COVID-19 injured list after they showed symptoms of illness, though they tested negative for the virus.
In MLB’s 2020 Operations Manual, players or coaches testing positive on the road are required to remain in that city and self-quarantine for 14 days, and must test negative twice at least 24 hours apart to return to the roster. The entire Marlins team remained in Philadelphia on Sunday, self-quarantining rather than traveling home. On Monday, team CEO Derek Jeter said in a statement that the Marlins would remain in Philadelphia pending the results of another round of testing. Meanwhile, Phillies players and staff underwent saliva testing at the drive-through facility at Citizens Bank Park; their results are still pending as of this writing.
As for where MLB goes from here, that so many Marlins personnel tested positive has not affected the league’s resolve to continue the season. The 30 owners had their weekly conference call with commissioner Rob Manfred on Monday afternoon, during which there was no talk of cancellation, according to Joel Sherman. In his column in the New York Post, Sherman added, “[T]he decision was made to continue to play with the belief that 60-player pools per team were created in anticipation of an outbreak, hope that the contagion in Philadelphia was limited to just the Marlins and belief that this will help reinforce safety and health protocols moving forward.” In other words, the Marlins are supposed to next-man-up this situation just as the Nationals did when they lost Soto, but with perhaps more than a dozen players from their alternate training site, many as green as the outfield grass. On Monday, Heyman reported the team was out “looking for extra MLB quality players.” Yikes.
All of that sounds wildly optimistic, to say the least, as does Manfred’s hope that after postponing Tuesday’s game against the Orioles in Miami, the Marlins will be able to resume play on Wednesday and Thursday in Baltimore “if the testing results are acceptable,” as he told MLB Network’s Tom Verducci in a nine-minute interview on Monday. Oxford College of Emory University epidemiologist Zachary Binney — the other expert consulted by The Athletic, incidentally — called the plan for the Marlins to continue while being augmented by additional players from the taxi squad (which he conflated with those from the alternate training site) “absolutely insane” and “the literal stupidest possible plan.” Binney explained his reasoning in an additional series of tweets:
https://twitter.com/zbinney_NFLinj/status/1287890838018822147
https://twitter.com/zbinney_NFLinj/status/1287893772341325824
In the interview, Verducci asked Manfred what it would take to consider shutting down a team or a portion of the league’s schedule. Said Manfred, “I think that a team losing a number of players that rendered it completely non-competitive would be an issue that we would have to address and have to think about making a change. Whether that was shutting down a part of the season, the whole season, that depends on the circumstances. Same thing with respect to league-wide; you get to a certain point league-wide where it does become a health threat and we certainly would shut down at that point.”
Here one can’t help but wonder if that point would already have been reached, and the situation met with greater alarm if a bona fide contender — rather than one of the majors’ least competitive and least-watched teams — had so many players test positive. The Marlins project to be the NL’s worst team; imagine if players from its best, the Dodgers, had similarly experienced an outbreak. Transpose the positions of the Marlins who tested positive onto the Dodgers’ lineup and you’d have the rather shocking news that Sunday starter Julio Urías, catcher Will Smith, first baseman Max Muncy, and right fielder Mookie Betts were all sidelined — and then, that seven or 11 additional, unidentified Dodgers were positive as well, raising the possibility that reigning NL MVP Cody Bellinger and/or three-time Cy Young winner Clayton Kershaw might be among them. Perform that mental exercise with Yankees, Astros, Nationals, or Cubs players and again, it’s likely a whole different ballgame, with public outcry at least an order of magnitude beyond what it is for a set of players who aren’t household names.
If MLB won’t cancel the season outright, should it consider stopping play for two weeks right now to make sure that the Marlins and any other team that they’ve been exposed to is clear of an outbreak, thus pushing the now-expanded postseason into November? Nobody in any official capacity has broached the subject, but with the nationwide case numbers where they are, shutdowns and/or rollbacks of reopening appear inevitable in places like Florida, Georgia, Texas, and Arizona, so it’s difficult to imagine that infection rates could be higher later this year than they are now. Attempting a reset of the MLB season, with more stringent protocols in place — cracking down even on the spitting and the high-fiving and so on while finding ways to further increase testing capacity and oversight while decreasing turnaround time — might be safer than proceeding under the current conditions.
If pushing further into the fall is deemed unwise, well, maybe the 60-game season becomes 50 games, which would stink, and also mean less money for the players. With the move to expand the playoffs to 16 teams this year, this season already resembles a tournament more than it does a standard major league campaign, so what’s another concession in that direction? Maybe a team that reaches some threshold for infections is shut down for a couple of weeks, effectively eliminating them from contention, but is allowed to return to play for the sake of competitive integrity (if such a thing can exist amid this mess). If that left contenders with an uneven number of games, they’d be ranked by winning percentage without regards to the differing number of games played, because again, this is a dumb tournament, not rocket science.
Of course, all of these admittedly slapdash solutions beg the question of whether MLB should even be attempting this. As I sit here brainstorming half-baked solutions to problems that rely on the shaky premise of having to complete the season, it feels cavalier to do so without acknowledging that each positive-testing player may face life-threatening or career-altering consequences. Earlier this month, we learned that Freddie Freeman was praying for his life when he battled infection, and more recently, Eduardo Rodriguez was diagnosed with myocarditis. This is nothing to take lightly.
As with the situation when MLB’s transition from intake testing to daily testing turned into a mess due to holiday-related delays and backlogs, the public is losing confidence in MLB’s ability to pull this season off safely, and it’s possible that the players are as well. [UPDATE: On that note, Rosenthal reported on Tuesday that the “vast majority” of Nationals players voted against going to Miami for their scheduled three-game series from July 31-August 2. The players don’t get to make that call; the decision on whether to move the series “will rest with MLB.” Even so, it’s noteworthy that the Nationals have publicly offered some pushback as to the league’s plans.]
If MLB is determined to bluster and blunder through this, one wonders if this scare will induce more players to consider dropping out. On Monday I noted the ambivalence of Mike Trout when it came to playing this season, as he and his wife Jessica are expecting their first child next month; not until last Wednesday did he definitively say he would continue, that while citing the way his teammates had adhered to safety protocols and had avoided an outbreak. If one on the order of the Marlins’ outbreak were to occur within the Angels’ clubhouse right now, Trout might well pick up his bats and go home for the rest of the summer. Not only would it be impossible to fault him for doing so, but his decision could embolden other players to make the same one themselves.
As the rapid spread of COVID-19 has shown at several turns, today’s bold plans to forge ahead may look foolishly optimistic tomorrow. Maybe MLB will get lucky, and the outbreak within the Marlins’ clubhouse won’t spread even further within the team, or to another club, or be replicated in a clubhouse far away. Most likely, however, this is just the latest of many serious situations the league will have to confront before deciding whether it still has the stomach to continue.
Brooklyn-based Jay Jaffe is a senior writer for FanGraphs, the author of The Cooperstown Casebook (Thomas Dunne Books, 2017) and the creator of the JAWS (Jaffe WAR Score) metric for Hall of Fame analysis. He founded the Futility Infielder website (2001), was a columnist for Baseball Prospectus (2005-2012) and a contributing writer for Sports Illustrated (2012-2018). He has been a recurring guest on MLB Network and a member of the BBWAA since 2011, and a Hall of Fame voter since 2021. Follow him on BlueSky @jayjaffe.bsky.social.
Thank you Jay, very cool!
Basically, as long as they follow the rules and don’t let players who have tested positive play, I think it will be OK. They may need to impose more stringent “bubbling” requirements on a team-by-team basis. It will lead to more wins, as well as better public health.
Supposedly no Phillies players have tested positive so far. Good news.
In your statement who is “they” and what specifically are “the rules”? I feel like you didn’t read the opinions of the epidemiologists or really read this article at all.
“they” would be the teams, and the rules would be not to put players on the field who are known to have coronavirus, or at least should be highly suspected to have it.
At this point, that is the entirety of the Marlins and Phillies. The Marlins are up to 17 positives, it isn’t a stretch to think the entire team and coaching staff has a high likelihood of having it, they certainly all have been exposed.
And there’s no chance they will be the only team just because they’re from Florida.
I don’t agree that the Phillies would be highly suspected to have it, unless they were partying together after the game. The Marlins, yes…because they didn’t follow the rules in the first place.
Did they publish the number of negative tests for the Marlins and or Phillies?
It sounds like they followed the rules, as vague as they are. Other than the tautology that they have an outbreak, how do you know they didn’t follow the rules? I’m wondering if these rules are insufficient to prevent an outbreak.
Excellent question, “How do you know they didn’t follow the rules?”.
Has anyone come up with rules that have prevented an outbreak anywhere?
Bob Nightengale has reported that one or more Marlins players went out on the town in Atlanta during the final pre-season games, thus breaking protocol.
I’m inclined to see how this goes. If it falls apart down the road, so be it. But to shut down now over what apparently seems to be bad judgement by some players is overreaction. I think this incident might actually work toward greater adherence to the protocols.
The Philadelphia inquirer reported today that no Philllies test came back positive so far.
It’s way too early to know if the Phillies contracted from the Marlins yet or not. We don’t know when the first Marlin was infectious and came into contact with the Phillies, but at earliest it was Friday. That means 5 days is just now. What we really don’t know is if the type of contact players on other teams in a baseball game are likely to have is likely (or how likely it is) to spread COVID between players on different teams this season. And we won’t know that it didn’t spread to the Phillies unless no Phillies test positive for another 9 days.
It’s also just freaking insane that the Marlins are playing today. There are almost certainly additional players on the Marlins who are going to get sick over the next several days. If it does infect a player on another team, the odds are pretty significant that it spreads through the entire NL and AL East.
The Marlins are not playing today.
Have the Marlins cancelled their season?
They’ve now postponed the week’s games. Why don’t you cease with your shtick? It’s weird. And you’re proving nothing. Or keep at it I guess. But know that this thing you’re doing is annoying. Maybe that’s the point. If so, kudos.
Where did you read the Marlins cancelled any games other than those against Baltimore?
so you’re sticking with it? good to know.
espn.com
This is from 3 hours ago on ESPN.
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/29553630/mlb-postpones-all-marlins-games-sunday
So this means cancellation of the Nationals games with the Marlins
Here’s the problem, as alexpbloom points out below – even with MLB’s every-other-day testing regimen, there’s a two-to-three-day window in which a player is infected and shedding virus (in other words, contagious) but has not yet received a negative test result and been isolated.
Player 1 is tested Monday morning, exposed on Monday evening, gets back a negative result on Tuesday, is tested again on Wednesday (but is not yet shedding enough virus for a positive result), gets back another negative result on Thursday (and likely begins shedding enough virus to infect others in close proximity), is tested on Friday, and gets back the positive test result on Saturday, so goes into isolation – after having been exposing all around him all day Thursday and Friday.
Uncontrolled R0 of COVID-19 is estimated at 4.5, so maybe 3 of the people that Player 1 spreads to on Th/Fr are Players 2, 3, and 4. They aren’t shedding enough virus to return a positive result on Saturday from their Friday test samples, but by Sunday they are likely shedding enough to be contagious and test positive – but aren’t isolated until the test results come back Monday, by which point they’ve each spread to maybe another 2-3 players (plus 1-2 other people in the community). Now you have 6-9 players who will not get back a positive test and go into isolation until Wednesday, but will be infectious before that – and each spread to another 2-3 players, and you have anywhere from 20-40 players who will test positive by the next weekend.
In two weeks, a team that immediately sends players into isolation following a positive test and getting 24-hour turnaround, can have 20-40 players positive in two weeks. Exponential growth is a bitch.
What is the ratio of asympotomatic postitive tests to symptomatic positive tests? Is anyone running a fever that was detected by the temperature checks mandated by the protocols?
“negative test result” at the end of the first paragraph should of course be “positive test result”
So no information on of the ration of asymptomoatic to those with symptoms among the positive test results or if anyone had a fever?
While your post is very informative, where are you getting data that says “uncontrolled R0 of COVID-19 is estimated at 4.5”? Most estimates I’ve seen believe natural spread is between 2 and 3. (I’ve seen another estimate that indicates a range between 1.3 and 4).
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.10.20060954v2
“The work here shows that there is global convergence (i.e. across many nations) to an uncontrolled Ro=4.5 that describes the early time spread of COVID-19.”
Good piece, well-written, and told straight. The 60 man player pools probably provide enough “redundancy” manpower for MLB to just push ahead. What matters to the owners is getting through to the playoffs, where the money is. It doesn’t help that this is being played out at a time of such intense polarization that much of the country can’t even agree on facts, much less on cohesive public policy. Important for us all to remember that professional sports profits from its relationship with government (literally) and doesn’t want to mess with that. Hopefully, what we will see is only little flareups that are aren’t serious to the players themselves and are dealt with through roster elasticity. The biggest risk the sport has isn’t whether 15 players go on the COVID list at the same time, it’s a Freeman or Rodriguez situation that escalates even further, and comes in a time of recurrent positives. At some point, the weight of that kind of health risk (to say nothing of the PR associated with it) becomes too great to sustain the season.
To be fair, the country is way more unified on COVID-19 than it is on basically any other issue. It’s just that the minority position on this is in charge of a ton of executive branch offices and the federal and state level.
What is that unified national view on Covid 19?
That huffing essential oils protects you 100%, duh.
Your posts indicates you’ve been huffing something pretty hard.
That a few loud, stupid, people are making this last months longer than it needs to, especially compared to the EU.
Who are these stupid people you mention in your post?
https://xkcd.com/2305/
It is a little less unified now, but the same basic idea still applies here. This should answer all of your questions and give you the context for it. The one that has changed the most is the schools one; everything else has gone down a little, but is still in the kittens-to-apple-pie range.
Were Freeman or Rodriguez hospitalized? Is any player hospitalized? Has any player been hospitalized?
I see (18 other times) that you like asking questions to further an agenda. I don’t share that agenda. I do think people can make rational decisions based on the facts on the ground, and there may be a saturation point where the weight of what’s going on finally causes them to opt-out. Surely more cases like Freeman and Rodriguez will weigh more heavily on their minds than those instances which are asymptomatic or with comparatively mild ones. People calibrate risk every day, and I’d imagine even you might agree that there’s a difference in driving, at, say, 75 MPH and 105 MPH. Both drivers know they are speeding, but one is clearly taking more risk than the other.
Actually I ask questions elicited by the post I reply to. If you see a clear “agenda” in my posts please define it.
The Marlins had 17 players test positive in 48 hours. Have you heard of one single Marlins player opting out of playing in light of these developments?
Do you know how many Marlins players tested negative?
Do you know how many of the positive tests are asymptomatic?
Do you know how many of the postitive tests even have a fever?
Do you know of any Marllins player that is in the hospital?
Isn’t Freddy Freeman not only completely recovered but he is on the field playing baseball against the best in the world?
Why wouldn’t players reach the conclusion that Freddy’s case is as bad as it gets?
Why haven’t the baseball players reached the same conclusions about risk represented in your post?
I don’t feel compelled to engage further. You are getting plenty of airtime on this particular post (up to 37 and counting) and you have a point to make. Let’s assume for argument’s sake you’ve made it, and move on.
ttrav doesn’t make points or claims because he prefers not to back them up. It’s so much easier to “Just Ask Questions”.
Actually I read posts that elicit questions and ask them.
What is your objective in doing this? Why should people engage with your questions?
Gaining knowledge is the objecitve. Intellectaul honest poeple never shirk from answering a relevant question asked about their opinions.
Opinions aren’t knowledge and you’re asking questions to be obstinate.
Since we’re not shirking from answering a relevant question.
Actually I’m asking questions of deeply flawed opinions and you characterize those questions as obstinate because you are either too ignornat to answer them or you realize the answers contradict the opinions.
Who do you claim to speak for when you typoed “we’re” by the way or do you have multiple personality disorder?
You’re gaining nothing by repeating yourself ad nauseum, besides the enmity of other commenters. You don’t clearly state any opinions or facts of your own; you merely ask asinine questions phrased in such a way that implies your negative view on the matter regardless of whether or not you actually state your view – which you don’t, because you’re either a coward or a troll.
Also, I didn’t typo “we’re”. You stated that intellectually honest people don’t shirk answering a relevant question. I am an (mostly) intellectually honest person who makes up part of that collective of people. If you actually cared about reading and/or comprehension and/or rational discourse you might have caught that. But hey, by all means keep yelling the same questions into the void, not caring what the answers are.
Lol. Smart people ignore questions all the time. Because smart people have asked themselves the relevant questions before and therefore smell BULLLSHIT a mile away. You’re bullshit.
Actaully smart people never ignore a pertinent question.
Is ttrav an anti-science troll? I don’t have an agenda, but I read posts that elicit questions and then ask them.
Here is a science based qestion for you. Is the percentage of postiive tests in the sample of MLB players higher or lower than the percentage of the population at large.
If you look at the stuides done in Santa Clara, among pregnant women in NYC, and in Boston suburbs the answer is no, the MLB rate is significantly lower than the population at large.
All the Phillies tests cam back negative so far. Another piece of scientific evidence contradicting the articles claim of “full blown crisis.”
The headline turned out to be excellent click bait though.
Well, because there are 4.5?’illion cases to compare themselves to? Maybe? Freddie is not the worst case. Dead is the worst case. And every age has sided. 9,10,11,,12,13,14-24,25-35.
Every age has died. All of them. So yea, being a baesball player is cool, but it doesn’t put you on a pool between a asymptomatic and Freddie. It’s between asymptomatic and dead. Period.
Actually Freddie is the worst case scenario because the fatality rate of infected major league players is 0.0%.
I know that is a complicated number for you to understand so I’ll put is into words, ZERO, NADA, NONE, ZILCH.
Hey, Freddie didn’t die, Eddie has myocarditis, play me some baseball! You’re the worst kind of troll ttrav.
None of the Phillies test cam back positive. Wipe the egg of the “full-blown crisis” offyour face.
It is terrifying to me the continual lack of leadership and multiple levels within MLB.
– Mattingly has shown repeatedly to not intervene (or even consider so) when his players take risky actions. How he is still a manager after this year is questionable (and I say that as a biased yankee fan)
– Manfred appears incapable or in denial about playing our scenarios. Even now, based on his quotations does he have a plan if more players test positive? What is his threshold of players being incapacitated?
– Owners not stepping up to provide/demand additional safeguards. If half of the teams have resorted to their own additional testing (which is great!) then why aren’t they demanding better from the league? Your risk is correlated with every other teams.
I’m sorry if this rant sounds curmudgeonly. It is just so apparent (to me) that we have poor leadership and as a fan I am frustrated that I can do nothing to change it. And thus I’m screaming at all of you guys.
I’m sorry. This just sucks.
Rant accepted!
It’s almost as if the owners don’t actually give a shit about the health of their employees, including the ballpark staff, travel staff, and coaches, so long as they get games in and make that sweet, sweet tv money.
That can’t possibly be the case, though, right? I mean, I can’t really recall any instances in our society when the wealthiest say the health and safety of others and important while taking actions that are directly contradictory to that.
Seize the means of run production, friends.
The owners aren’t the ones who wanted to fit in as many games as possible and they aren’t the ones that voted to play against the Phillies.
They allowed that vote to happen.
You would rather dictate than have a vote decide?
Who? No. I would rather make it clear who refused to vote. Who refuses to take responsibility. That is the owners.
So now you abandon yoru previous postiion. First, you said the vote should be allowed to happen. Your exact words were “they allowed that vote to happen.”
Now your citicism is that the owners did not vote and you make the vacuous claim that they “refuse to take responsibility.”
The owners decided the entire format of the current season after negotations with the players broke down. There is no questioin who is taking responsiblity for the format of this season. You don’t have a rational argument in any way, shape, or form.
You just blindly and irrantionally rant against the owners. Looks like you have deep seated problems with authority.
Two things:
1) The owners were absolutely hungry to have a season. They seemed to have a set amount that they were willing to pay the players to do it and were willing to pay that amount for however many games the players were willing to play for that amount;
2) The players’ bravado/naivety/ignorance in pushing forward with the season and the recent game do not excuse the owners’ and MLB’s failure to provide for and administer reasonable safety protocols. Both the players and management can fuck up at the same time.
I would say the owners were hungry to have a POST-season.
1) The owners wanted as few regular season games as possible. They primarily cared about the post-season, as the increased TV money makes those games profitable even without fans.
2) Safety protocols were collectively bargained, not unilaterally imposed on the players. And again, the players themselves voted to go ahead with that contest despite the positive tests. You didn’t mention anything at all about the players bearing any responsibility, you put that entirely on the owners because you’re pushing a political narrative.
What political narrative is he pushing?
If players shared your perspective, that owners don’t care at all, why haven’t they opted out of the season?
It seems to me threshold is when a majority of the owners cave in to public pressure. Any cancellation will surely be done kicking and screaming at the last possible moment.
Wouldn’t the real threshhold be when players refuse to play? Have you heard of any new opt outs after the recent number of cases on the Marlins? Have any Marlins opted out?
I’ve said it since day one. The only way the season gets cancelled is if a bunch of high profile players opt out midseason and public perception turns further against the MLB. I don’t understand the response to the MLB response. They implemented 60 man rosters for this reason. Teams have shown time and time again to only care about profit…why would anyone expect that it is different this time? Teams will forfeit first. The MLS had an entire team not be able to play, and you had better believe that they’d prefer that here.
Which baseball team is making a profit this season? Have any players regardless of their profile opted out since the news about the Marlins positive tests came out? Have any of the Marlins players opted out?
> The only way the season gets cancelled is if a bunch of high profile players opt out midseason and public perception turns further against the MLB.
Or, heaven forbid, some 62-year-old equipment manager or clubhouse attendant contracts SARS-CoV-19 and dies.
Has any player at all opted out in light of the 17 positive tests on the Marlins? Heck, has any Marlin player opted out?
Not curmudgeonly. Truth.
Yeah, couldn’t agree more. Rant more than justified. This all sucks.
What player or players have been incapaciated? Freddie Freeman is playing.
He is playing now. He had a 104.5 fever before the season started.
Sure he did.
“How do we know the moon isn’t made of cheese? No one has said it isn’t, so it must be!” –you, probably
The Apollo moon landings found no cheese on the moon. Proof positive the moon is not made of cheese.
He is playing now. After having a 104.5 fever before the season started. In other words he is completely recovered and able to perform against the best in the world at his chosen sport.
Did he ever even enter the hospital?
I’ve played in college rec leagues that were better organized and more transparent than MLBs last 6 months.
It’s not just poor leadership within MLB. It’s poor leadership practically everywhere you look.
Just remember that the NBA shut down when a single player tested positive. Meanwhile, MLB has a dozen players from the same team infected and they decide “play on!”. And last night. Manfred does an in-person interview with Veducci and neither one of them wore a mask. Just speechless…
At the onset of the outbreak. I’ll bet you a million shrute bucks that won’t happen again.
I’ll see your million schrute bucks and raise you a billion stanley nickels. And throw in a few unicorns and leprechauns for good measure…
I actually disagree – the first person who gets sick in the NBA bubble is going to torpedo the season, because Adam Silver, unlike Manfred who apparently doesn’t care, invests a great deal of energy into tailoring that league to particular sensibilities, and maintaining his and the league’s progressive creds.
Now what I will agree with is that comparing decisions made in March/April to now is foolish. A heck of a lot has changed since then.
Who are you disagreeing with? Me or Original Greaser Bob?
The whole point of the bubble is that it should make it pretty easy to limit outbreaks. Essentially, you enter the bubble with very limited contacts for 2 weeks to ensure you don’t get sick during that time. It makes it a lot easier to have one case not turn into 14 cases, or to at least say “we can be confident we’re limiting all cases to one small group.”
if a major league player share your opinion wouldn’t they opt out? Why haven’t more major league players opted out?
It’s been one day. Wait for it. And stop trolling or we will start posting recipes. Hour questions are moronic. It’s been one day, is the obvious answer to your absurd question. Grow the eff up.
No opt out this morning. Phillies test came back negative. The cliff of irrationality your argument is standing on is crumbling fast.
Why aren’t major league players opting out? Why aren’t Marlins players opting out? How do you explain the disconnect between your opion and the actual actions of players on the team with the highest infection rate?
You like to ask questions which a) we cannot know the answers to, and b) have multiple possible answers. Is there a point in there?
Of course there are answers to the questions I asked.
You think it is impossible to answer the question “why aren’t major league players option out of the 2020 season?
You think it is impossible to answer the question “why aren’t Marlins players opting ou of the 2020 season?
EMH 1969 made insinuations that Major League Baseball is forcing the players to play on after the Marlins recent positive tests.
The point is to ask him pertinent questions that his posts elicits.
The answer is “time”. Moron. It has been one day. The repercussions will play out over two weeks. Read a newspaper about the virus. You look like, and maybe are, an idiot.
Acutally this is the end of the second day and not one Marlins player has opted out.
As far as the virus you seem to need an education. Do you know the ratio of aysmptomatic cases to symptomatic in the age and health group of major league baseball players? Do you know the recovery rate so far of baseball players and their families? Do you know anything?
Two observations:
1. Rob Manfred might be incapable of making a statement that isn’t tone deaf (at least he didn’t use the words “collateral damage”).
2. Reading this comment section is going to really jazz up my work day.
While the Commissioner and MLB infrastructure has always been the public face of the owners, there has always been the narrative that they are operating with major league baseball’s best interest. Implementing rules regarding PEDs (albeit way too late) and handing down punishments for technological cheating are problematic examples, but examples nonetheless that the League tries to uphold the integrity of baseball.
It’s clear that whatever was left of this fiction of the MLB Commissioner’s office being in control of the integrity of men’s professional baseball is gone after this last week. If a SS can determine whether 2 teams play and 30 owners continue to push ahead regardless if MLB bureaucracy offered any pushback (doubtful) then MLB’s lack of institutional control is an ongoing recipe for disaster. It reminds me of the NFL “big tobacco” stance regarding concussions. Let’s keep the wheels turning despite players getting hurt and fans getting turned off from the game.
Much like America is currently meandering its way through the pandemic until a vaccine is developed, I think MLB is going to taxi squad its way until either the infection rate abates or there are too many teams on the COVID-IL to ignore it. In either case, I doubt it MLB will be proactive and will just keep rescheduling games with minor league talent to keep the wheels going. Who knows, maybe the Marlins are the outlier and the rest of the season will go swimmingly. Given the state of the country, I seriously doubt it and for all the problems the League has ignored or caused over the decades (and will continue to cause with the gutting of the MiLB), this lack of control is definitely up there in the pantheon of bad decisions.
Based on the size of the outbreak, both the Marlins and the Phillies need to be in quarantine for 10 days as everyone was likely exposed.
This. This virus is known to sometimes incubate for a week or more between being exposed and testing positive. I don’t know what a negative test a day or two after exposure is supposed to prove. There’s just such a high likelihood that one or more players testing negative today is incubating the virus, and we now know for a fact that infections can be spread widely among teammates. There’s a plausible scenario where a not-yet-positive Marlins player infects so many of the call-ups that the Marlins literally can’t field a full roster in a week or two.
It’s still entirely possible that this blows over. If none of the Marlins players and coaches become seriously ill, there are only one or two more positives among the exposed Marlins and Phillies, and the Marlins AAA team plays for a week until the regulars come back, everybody forgets about this until next time.
OTOH, this could also be the inflection point for an outbreak affecting most of the league. If more Marlins and a handful of Phillies test positive a week from now, then the “next man up” plan has failed and whoever they’ve played in the interim needs to realize that they almost certainly have players infected now as well. At that point, it’s hard to see how MLB has any choice but to shut those teams down as well. So now you’ve got 4-6 teams (and their opponents) sitting out instead of two. And that’s just the baseball impact, setting aside the possibility of a player or coach or their family members becoming seriously ill.
In the worst-case scenario, we could be looking back at this in two weeks wondering why the hell MLB didn’t pull the plug when they had the chance. Whether it gets to that point or not, let’s hope everybody affected recovers quickly and there’s not a human cost that makes this much worse than canceling a few baseball games.
With the way the schedule is set this year, it could shut down the entire NL and AL East. It can’t spread further than that (unless a traded player brings it over) prior to the post-season. But still, having a third of the league shut down would be bad, and that’s without the whole “this could kill players/coaches/umpires/staff” issue.
If the Phillies were properly following protocol, that’s not necessarily true for them. Who is COVID-19 most likely to be transmitted to? Someone who is in close contact with someone COVID-19 positive for 10-15 minutes. Who do I worry about most? The catchers, the first baseman, and the plate umpire. Which is why they should all be wearing masks that cover their nose and mouth.
While it’s true that catchers and first basemen have the most contact with opposing players, what if the Marlins’ catcher and first baseman played while contagious? Then everybody on the Phillies could have been exposed. But you’re correct that we don’t know yet how readily infections pass between teams during a game. In a week or so we’ll know more, I guess.
Unfortunately, “infections can’t easily pass between teams” isn’t one of the things we might learn from this incident, though many people will jump to that conclusion if no Phillies get sick. The actual things we can learn here are “definitely can happen” or “didn’t happen this time.”
Agreed. I would also add the shortstop or the second baseman, when there is a runner at second base. And the third baseman when there is a runner at third.
I have a friend who has a good analogy about “predicting the weather” vs. “predicting the climate.” If it is mid-January and you want to predict whether it will snow tomorrow, good luck to you. If you want to predict how many days it will snow in January and February, you’re going to be pretty accurate. You know snow will happen, you just don’t know when.
I think this is a very good analogy for this situation. It was completely, 100% inevitable this was going to happen, where so much of a team tested positive they would have to cancel games and/or have trouble fielding a competitive team. In fact, it was probably about 90% inevitable that it would happen to 20 teams or more. The only surprise here is that it happened so soon. That’s it. Nothing else about this is surprising.
Not all teams will play the same number of games, and very few will play 60. You could have most of a starting lineup having to miss a playoff series. You definitely want to play teams when a good chunk of their lineup is sick, so “strength of schedule” means less than it did other years. You could even have times where the whole league goes on “pause” because too many teams have outbreaks. But it’s not surprising that MLB is forging ahead. This is an escalation of commitment, and they will continue to push forward until the broader society is panicking (which it isn’t right now, but probably will eventually) or until they can’t field teams anymore.
I agree but I would take the under on 20 teams though. Maybe a half dozen.
I am coming away from this incident with two firm convictions. One, MLB absolutely should postpone, if not cancel, the season. Two, MLB absolutely will not do so until it has no other options.
Why would you cancel? Based upon what reasoning. That one out of thirty has a problem. Are you any good at math? Can you divide a numertor of one by a denominator of 30? The resulting percentage is one that you would base policy on? What are you in chage of in real life that you use that kind of percentage to dictate policy?
Since you asked so nicely…
Are you aware of the concept of exponential growth or how it applies to the coronavirus?
Are you aware that people can spread the coronavirus without experiencing symptoms?
Are you aware that MLB players constantly interact with one another on their own teams, travel to new cities every week, stay in hotels and will undoubtedly be going to bars and restaurants?
My employer has been 100% work from home since March. It’s partially for our safety but more importantly, it’s part of being a decent corporate citizen in the midst of a pandemic, when creating unnecessary gatherings and social contacts can inadvertently spread illness not just to your colleagues but to many, many people downstream.
MLB is affirmatively choosing to be a bad neighbor and a bad corporate citizen right now. There are risks associated with everything, but there are more responsible ways and more reckless ways to restart sports. The NBA and NHL are doing it in the responsible way and MLB is doing it in the reckless way. The risk of that choice manifested almost immediately with half a team testing positive.
Shut it down.
1 team out of 30 has half their players infected after that team and the league played 3 games. If you had a 3% chance of contracting a deadly virus every time you, say, flew on an airplane, would you fly on an airplane? Would you then fly 20 more times, and still think you will be FINE? Those are some shit odds. Maybe the Marlins end up the outlier, but if you don’t see why there is concern that this happened 3 days and one road trip into the season, maybe that is because you are bad at math?
Noooo. It’s much easier to predict if it will snow tomorrow in January than it is to calculate how many snow days there will be in January and February. By far.
Few posts have so many falsehoods. 1 team has had a problem and suddenly out of thin air it is 20.
Were you the one that turned those few fish and loaves into enough to feed the multitudes with your amazing powers of multiplying out of thin air?
First, I want to thank Jay for his proper use of the term “begs the question.” So many people, even professional writers and announcers, say that when they really mean “raises the question.” They are not interchangeable.
From the start of the first polls on FG, I’ve been in the camp that the season would never be finished. It may shut down sooner than I expected.
Final point – I was watching the Yankees last game against the Nationals and was really disappointed and appalled at the amount of spitting I saw. Luke Voight spit five times in the span of a couple of pitches. He undoubtedly did more than that since they only showed him up close a couple of times. He wasn’t the only one either. If I were nearby I’d have been mightily pissed off about that.
sb21, agreed. The Players social distancing compliance has been bad. Judge, Stanton and others were also offenders. One would think that with 100 pages everything was covered with outbreaks- yet a shortstop determines whether a game is played? Jay’s critique of the MLB plan is fair. Why won’t we call out players who don’t wear masks, distance, and play “safely” ? Jay didn’t. Sadly if it doesn’t fit our narratives we don’t. I hope baseball does continue. But MLB and the PLAYERS need to do better.
The tweets seem a bit extreme. Whether or not they should play is one thing,but saying all the players should quarantine for 14 days (when plenty of MLB players only had it for a couple days) is also extreme. Quarantine until 2 negative tests.
Also to me it seems very unlikely that players spread it to the other team in the course of the game. That’s just generally not how viruses are spread. Service contamination risk is low, and being outside lowers other ways of passing it as well. Most likely players spread it to other players in the clubhouse or dugout or bus. The other teams are at very low to no risk of having got it from simply playing. This reminds me of the way people spoke when Magic Johnson had HIV and continued to play. That isn’t how it spreads and it is harder to pass it to someone else than most people think.
I’m glad you know more than a leading epidemiologist (the tweeter) and the CDC: “How should I self-quarantine after being in close contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19?
For most, self-quarantine can take place at home. If possible, contacts should be asked to voluntarily stay home, monitor themselves, and maintain social distance from others.
The timeframe for self-quarantine is 14 days following the last day of exposure to a patient with COVID-19, to ensure that the contact does not get sick themselves and spread the virus to others. Adherence to self-quarantine instructions may depend on the support provided to contacts.”
That isn’t what I said. The reason that the CDC recommends that is because most people do not have access to unlimited tests, and they do not want people going out to get tests until 14 days have passed and the likelihood of them spreading it is lower. None of this applies to the MLB where players have access to unlimited tests and turnaround time frames that are much shorter than the national average.
The reason is the incubation period, not the lack of testing. There is a lag between exposure and testing positive, during which you are contagious.
Correct. Harvard Medical School says that you will get a false negative 100% of the time if tested on the day of exposure, 40% of the time if tested within 4 days, and 20% of the time if tested within 3 days of developing symptoms. (Thank you Nick Stellini Twitter!)
You can’t just say everything is copacetic after 2 tests.
It isn’t what you said, but it is what you implied. If what you said (that the 14 days is excessive and we should do 2 negative tests) were true and how we should operate, then that’s what the expert would have said.
But it’s not. The expert asked them to quarantine for 14 days. You therefore are saying that the expert is wrong and that you know more. You can add conditionals like “under normal circumstances” but the tweeter took those into consideration given that they were talking about this exact topic.
“Only had it for a couple of days”? What does that mean? No one gets covid for a couple of days. And you don’t necessarily test positive within a couple of days either. Four more today. That’s 17. I will bet there will be more tomorrow.
I am assuming that is incorrect. There is no one size fits all solution. Two people can get the same thing and one person dies and nothing happens to the other person. Look at the MLB timeframes, plenty of players tested negative, then got it, then they positive and then tested positive again and then provided two negative tests.
Twees sounds a little radical. They should play one thing, but to say that all players should be quarantined for 14 days (when a large number of MLB players have only a few days) is also very aggressive. Quarantine with 2 negative tests.
Also, it seems unlikely that the players will expand to another team in the game. This is usually not a way to spread the virus. The risk of service contamination is low, and there is another way to apply it. Many players can spread to other players in the locker room on either the bus or the long bus. Other teams are very weak, there is no risk of them just playing. It reminds me of how people say when Magic Johnson has COACH and keeps playing. It doesn’t spread and it’s harder to spread to others than most people think.
Freddy Freeman “praying for his life” is a little hyperbolic. The guy had a high fever, he never even went to the hospital. You overstated it even compared to the language in the very article you linked to.
The point is that there is no reason to cancel the season unless a large number of players start reassessing their willingness to take part in the game, which I doubt they will, because the risk to them is tiny. I think the big dropped ball here is that there appears to be a ‘well, what do we do now?’ mentality around the sport when this was so obviously going to happen at some point in the season. There should’ve been stipulated ties or forfeited games from the start for scenarios like this.
Otherwise, I have no problem at all with MLB opening or continuing to be open. Players are big boys and can do their risk/reward analysis for themselves. If authorities want to make the call that putting states back into quarantine is the way to go, then shut it down, but right now MLB games don’t even move the needle in terms of risky behaviors vs open bars, restaurants, casinos, mass transit, etc.
A quote from Freddie Freeman, “I said ‘Please don’t take me’ because I wasn’t ready.”
High fever, no hospitalization. His life was not in danger, despite what his subjective perception of it at the time may have been. Saying that he was praying for his life suggests he was critically ill.
Thank you doctor who treated Freddie Freeman and, presumably, received a HIPAA release in order to speak on his condition in internet comment sections. We appreciate your qualified opinion of his condition.
If you have a fever of 104 you are critically ill whether you go to the hospital or not and could certainly die or have serious, long-lasting physical consequences.
I maintain that a better description when addressing concerns for players’ health would have been “Freddie Freeman became quite ill but has recovered and Eduardo Rodriguez had complications but remains stable. No other players are known to have had serious adverse affects”. I acknowledge that I may be splitting hairs here, but I found the phrasing to be inflammatory and not communicating information that would give a reader an accurate sense of the situation.
This is something that gets overlooked a bit. Adults, generally, do not run fevers. I’ve run two fevers in the last 15 years. They were mild fevers. A 104 fever that you can’t bring down with Tylenol is go-get-intravenous-fluids time.
If you have a fever of 104, you might be okay. You also might not. And it will certainly feel like you are dying.
True – I recently had a 103 point something fever one of the (many) times my son brought strep home from school with him, plus debilitating joint pain, abdominal pain and chills. You do feel like you’re dying, it can turn into serious complications, and knowing it’s coronavirus, which obviously has proven fatal, would make that psychologically worse.
Then again, the worst case a player has had resulted in no hospitalization and a complete recovery. That information counts too.
I mean, there is a much wider pool you can draw from than MLB players. You can draw from the pool of 23-32 year olds and have a much better picture of what it looks like. Deaths are relatively low in that age group, but there are plenty of young people who have gotten it months ago who still aren’t better.
All that said, I’m not entirely sure why we’re talking about this. Getting the virus is a problem for 23-32 year olds. Giving the virus to people with underlying conditions or are older is even worse. That’s the problem with a pandemic–the problems multiply.
You hit the nail on the head, @sadtrombone.
The only good outcomes are negative test results. With the virus enveloping our nation like many uncontrollable wildfires, every new case is akin to igniting another fire.
Maybe every single infected athlete has a “good outcome” for him or herself, but we cannot rest with the idea that those are, indeed, “good” outcomes. They are not, because our primary objective is this:
Reduce the spread.
There are a number of details that can reasonably be challenged. However the basics are firm:
1. COVID kills some people.
2. If you don’t get it, you don’t die from it.
3. When more people have it, you’re more likely to get it.
Logically, then, growth in cases is a bad outcome regardless of an individual’s *personal* outcome.
If you want to be pedantic, you’re arguing that the language, “praying for his life” was misplaced,” and @68FC provided a direct quote that very much matches up with the definition of praying for one’s life.
If you want to now argue that Freeman should not have bothered praying because his life wasn’t really in danger, fine. But that’s a new topic, you lost the first one.
104.5 is very very close to the point where your organs start shutting down. A temperature at that point means you are extremely sick.
You’re doubling down on your argument from before?
The players literally just demonstrated that their opinions on whether or not they should play can’t be trusted. They exposed another team/umpires/personnel when there was a very high likelihood they were positive.
Also, Freeman was praying for his life.
Wake up. JFC
Yes, without hesitation. If local governments want to make the call that their economies should be shut down again, fair enough, but to somehow argue that MLB can’t make the same risk/reward assessments that every business in this country is making is patently stupid, especially when they are armed with more testing than everyone else has.
But everyone in the MLB bubble is there voluntarily, and frankly the risks to those involved are minute. The players get this, which is why they are acting how they are. The public gets this, which is why the bars are full. The point is that this is all a balancing act between individual interests and public interests, and the lowest hanging fruit of all low hanging fruits, is rhetoric that posits that any risk at all is unacceptable and any tradeoff in the face of even small risks unconscionable. That is not how the world works, but it is an easy hill to plant your flag on.
And “their opinions can’t be trusted”. Whose opinions will we trust then? These games have all been approved by local governments. Fauci himself threw out the first damn pitch of the season, which seems to me more than a slight endorsement of the activity. So the only people pounding the table on this are sports media and internet commentators – to be more specific, people with no stake.
The dispute I have with saying he was praying for his life is that it is hyperbolic, and thus misleading, not that is is inaccurate.
Oddball, you say “the public gets it” while also acknowledging that it is a balancing act between individual interests and public interests. The lack of knowledge about this virus, and people’s own individual interests can cloud their perception of public interest. People have yet to fully understand that false negative test results are about 40% while the person is asymptomatic. Moreover every person, when they choose to go out into the public sphere is interacting with dozens of people without realizing it. These two factors mean that the individual risk of carrying and spreading the virus is high enough to perpetuate the growing number of cases nationwide. It’s natural for people and baseball players to focus on immediate gratification and their job ahead, which is why it’s the job of policy to prevent people from making these dangerously short-sighted decisions. We’ve already seen it clearly with the Marlins that players can carry and spread a virus unknowingly, and will ignore that risk when given the option. Making these decisions is not “getting it”.
Also, Freddie is literally quoted as saying he feared for his life due to a 104.5 fever. While it may imply his life was seriously at risk, it moreso indicates the severity and psychological impact the virus can have on the healthiest person.
Where did Freddie Freeman get the virus by the way?
Isn’t Freddie Freeman completely over his fear of the virus? He is playing baseball again?
Do you think Freddie Freeman has reached the conclusion he is immune to the virus now that he had it and has nothing more to fear?
Do you think other baseball players look at Freddie Freeman as the worst it can get and look at Freddie now?
Why are you asking questions? Why hit answer some.
Actually I’ve anwered every quesiton posted to me, unlike you.
Why do questions make you uncomfortable Luke?
I love questions. But when someone only ask them, it is long proven. And I mean this, they are pieces of shit. Sorry. It’s proven man. Look it up on google.
“Whose opinions can be trusted?”
You’re actually suggesting that we trust a ballplayer’s–or a government’s–opinion, instead of a scientist’s?
Do you support Trump, too? Honestly want to know so I can decide whether to continue this conversation.
Actually I suggested that Fauci’s opinion had been tacitly expressed by participating in opening ceremonies. The point is that I trust, more than anyone, the people affected by risks to make decisions about those risks. Look at the Nationals – they voted not to play this weekend, which I find totally reasonable. If they decided to play, I would be concerned but not outraged. I am not substituting my judgment for others’.
Scientists and doctors are not the final say. They provide information and input limited to their specific purview, and the public needs to parse their input just like you would use independent judgment on risks vs quality of life with a doctor who advises a particular course of treatment. Again, I am not saying that one answer or another is the right one, I am just saying that the American public has pretty clearly chosen a path, and until that changes holding MLB to a stricter prevention standard than the rest of the country makes little sense, especially given the demographics and the nature of the activity.
I am not a Trump supporter. There are more than two categories of people in this country.
It is extremely unwise to believe that the general public, lay people, can determine whether or not the risks they are taking are reasonable. It’s not fashionable but experts are far more qualified to make that determination.
I clearly don’t share your disdain for lay people. They are remarkably good at knowing what’s in their best interest – to the frustration of central planners everywhere.
Experts are there to arm decision makers and the public with the best information possible, not to make decisions for them. If we do not listen to the experts and make mistakes, that is frankly the cost of a free society. At least we will be sleeping in the bed of our own making. If our decision makers disregard experts and turn out to be wrong, well, there is a process for redress for that.
I say this as someone who wears a mask everywhere, gets his vaccines, takes climate science seriously, etc. This is not some denialist screed.
I don’t hold lay people in disdain. I’m stating the plain fact that experts in a particular field are better able to judge the risks involved in actions pertaining to their field.
I find you to be too libertarian. You make claims that are similar to selfish individuals who refuse to wear a mask because they have the right to decide for themselves to take that risk. The problem with that stance, of course, is that not wearing a mask puts others at risk. No one had the right to do that. That is the situation now in MLB. The Marlins decided they were willing to accept risk but their actions had repercussions beyond their team. They should not have been the ones to make such a decision.
I wear a mask everywhere, even when visiting my mask-skeptic family members who grumble constantly that I’m doing it, and personally I think the mask as tyranny is a terrible hill to die on.
The point is that you have to look at this at a macro level. In a democracy you have to either accept that people are going to do the calculus for themselves on risk, prioritizing personal risk over community risk dependent on their temperament, or be prepared to put your thumb on the scale by implementing an effective enforcement regime. Can’t avoid it. This is not a libertarian perspective, this is a practical one. And since we are in an environment where there is basically zero political will for enforcement regimes, people’s judgment is what we’re working with. And like I said, we at least can say that we are getting the situation we asked for.
Please name the scientist that says we should cancel the baseball season.
Don’t confuse science with policy. Policy question: “If one team must postpone games for 2 weeks, can we continue the season?
Science question: “If 14 team members test positive at one time, what should the team do?”
Here’s what Zachary Binney said: “You need to press the pause button for longer, and MLB needs to step in and put on its big boy pants and be the adult in the room and recognize that. I would say for two weeks. One day is laughable. If they try to take anybody from that traveling party and have them play Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday, I don’t even have words for how reckless that would be.”
This analysis depends on what your goal is. All of these decisions must be made on a spectrum. It’s totally reckless if we all agree that no one in MLB should get coronavirus if it could be avoided. It’s more complicated if the goal is to minimize cases while maximizing games.
As you said that is where policy makers come in and science advises
No, we don’t agree that no one in MLB should get coronavirus. There is no way to acheive that impossible goal.
The real world says you take reasonable precautions, understand the taxk is to learn to live in a world infected by coronavirus and get on with your life.
If a team has 14 positives you should replace them with other players in the organization who want to play.
Do you always fall in the fallacy of appeal to authority?
Strawman
OK @ttrav:
If MLB were to follow CDC guidelines pertaining to exposure and quarantines it would, practically cancel the season.
“everyone in the MLB bubble is there voluntarily”
What MLB bubble?
I meant it in the sense of the set people involved in the sport, not in the sense of a cordoned off group
Please name a scientist that says baseball should shot down immediately.
Please name a government official calling for the baseball season to cease immediately.
Stop conflating policy with science.
MLB is not operating in a bubble. The conditions they are under are nothing like what the NBA and NHL will attempt.
Classic “I got mine”.
Why would Freedie Freeman play baseball after the experience you reference? Does he believe his is immune to the disease now and cannot get reinfected?
“Sealioning (also spelled sea-lioning and sea lioning) is a type of trolling or harassment which consists of pursuing people with persistent requests for evidence or repeated questions, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity. It may take the form of “incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate”.”
“Rhetorically, sealioning fuses persistent questioning—often about basic information, information easily found elsewhere, or unrelated or tangential points—with a loudly-insisted-upon commitment to reasonable debate. It disguises itself as a sincere attempt to learn and communicate. Sealioning thus works both to exhaust a target’s patience, attention, and communicative effort, and to portray the target as unreasonable. While the questions of the “sea lion” may seem innocent, they’re intended maliciously and have harmful consequences. — Amy Johnson, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society (May 2019)”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning#:~:text=Sealioning%20(also%20spelled%20sea%2Dlioning,invitations%20to%20engage%20in%20debate%22.
Your copied and pasted statement on Sealioning says questions about “unrelated and tangental points.”
I responded to a post by Obdebl on Freddie Freeman. My questions asked him why Freddie Freeman would bother player baseball again given Odbel’s characterization of his hillness.
My seond question asked if Freddie was playing now because he felt he was now immune to the disease.
I would characterize your post as the epitome of an ad hominem attack. Falsely attacking the individual instead of their post.
ttrav, did you ask Freddie Freeman? Why don’t you ask Freddie Freeman?
Freddie Freeman’s actions speak volumes. He just nearly died accourding to all the sensationlism, but yet what does Freddie do afterward. He goes right back to playing baseball.
Now there is a “full-blown crisis” in baseball with the viurs seemingly having wiped out the entire sport according to this message thread. Yet Freddie hasn’t opted out. Not one single major league players has opted out. HECK NOT ONE MARLIN IN THE EPICENT OF THE FULL BLOWN CRISIS has opted out.
So much for the “full-blown crisis.”
When will you stop sea-lioning? You are making Fangraphs worse with each post you make.
How much satisfaction do you derive from wasting everyone’s time?
ttrav, your lack of imagination is sad. How can one define “often” in this phrase: “often about basic information, information easily found elsewhere, or unrelated or tangential points”? Perhaps, “for example, but not excluding other possibilities”?
Not sure how ad hominem applies here, as you’re not making an argument. I’m not attacking your argument, because you aren’t making one.
You ability to comment based on complete and untter ignorance is quite entertaining.
Funny how you keep mentioning “tangental points” but can never name one.
You use the phrase “other possibilities” but never produce one of them.
Heck, you make ad hominem attacks and are so ignorant you don’t even now it.
The real question for someone who complains about irrelevance and tangents is what is your relative to in the discussion about the “full-blown crisis” baseball finds itself in that I’ve posted about all day and questioned.
I wait expectantly for your next ignroance driven diatribe.
Having the players vote on whether they want to play shows that they weren’t thinking about anyone other than themselves. It was a failure not to have a gameplan for when people got sick. Letting players vote on playing isn’t like letting players vote on treatment, instead of following medical expertise (but that is kind of the core of the national problem anyway).
Thank goodness there is someone like you who never thinks of themselves but always considers the greater good in every action. I’m especially impressed by the way you consult a medical professional about any health question you have and follow their directions blindly without question.
My question is how long are you are doing this comedic self- righteous stand up routine at the Holiday Inn Express out by the airport?
Street preachers have nothing on you.
Who decides what job you work since you thinks it is ludicrous for someone to make that type of decision for themselves?
TTrav, thanks for confirming you consider thinking about others to be a joke or something to be scorned. It seems your only purpose on these chats is to scorn and aggravate people for your own amusement.
BTW, like millions of people, when I have a deadly communicable disease, I stay home from work. It’s generally expected at most workplaces. That you think it’s something to be mocked say something nothing good about you. Good bye.
How
Any of this trav guy’s comments have to be rated into oblivion before he is banned. What a disgrace. Come on fangraphs. Pay attention to your readers. This libertarian attitude in the comments is a disgrace.
I clicked on the bold letters “praying for his life” in the article, and sure enough, it was a link to an article about Freddie Freeman praying for his life.
You ever see an adult with a temp of 104.5? Trust me, they are sick as shit and think they are going to die.
My guess is that MLB has very much contemplated this type of scenario and the reason it is not written into the safety protocols and you’re not getting straight answers from MLB right now is because what they plan to do (plow ahead, accept collateral damage and competitive degradation) would not be very palatable to the public if written down.
Why aren’t players in dugouts wearing masks and avoiding touching each other? Perhaps the Marlins forfeiting a few of these games would create better behavior. I’m being told that players are taking safety seriously and surely this could have been unavoidable, but my own eyes so far have seen players interact unnecessarily in ways that go against basic social distancing measures.
While I agree making an example of the Marlins may help other teams make better decisions moving forward, I also think it isn’t fair to fully blame them for operating within these haphazard guidelines on virus containment. I think they should mandate masks for all teams that had traveled within the last 4 days, and mandate all baseball executives to wear masks in public. Then, if anyone breaks these rules the punishment can come down.
This is precisely it. The entire MLB restart is founded on the power of positive thinking. The safety protocols are 100+ pages of clapping for Tinkerbell.
The plan all along was to white knuckle our way through and hope for the best; there is no Plan B.
You might also recognize this strategy from [gesturing broadly at the United States].
I am viewing from afar and continue to be amazed at the absolutely shambolic way a country as ‘great’ as the USA seems to have handled this whole crisis.
Here in the UK we have been far from flawless (very far from flawless in fact) in the way we have dealt with the virus, but have managed (for example), to complete the Premier League (soccer) season, a three test series of cricket against the West Indies and got our horse racing industry back up and running without any of these blocks of positives tests cropping up. MLB could not manage 3 days.
Genuinely baffled and saddened as a long time lover of America and American sports as to what is going on.
Is there a total lack of buy-in from the general public (including athletes) regarding safety measures such as masks and distancing, or was it more the mistake of going far too early with trying to return to normal and not getting the R rate under control?
Be well and be safe everyone wherever you are.
America has done a lot of things wrong, but I think COVID was circulating quietly through NYC for 2 months before things got serious in March, and to some degree we’ve been hopelessly behind ever since. ETA – “serious” may be relative and region-specific in this case
No excuse. Italy and Spain and many more countries have crushed their infection rate close to zero. One hundred cases is a spike in Europe now. We’re at 70,000 a day.
New York didn’t learn from Washington state.
And the rest of the country didn’t learn from New York.
What do you learn from New York, to send infected people to old age homes?
Not a total lack of buy-in on safety measures, but enough of a lack of buy-in (maybe 20-30%) that there are a sufficient number of people spreading it. Also, definitely re-opened too quickly in a number of places.
This should kill off the “American exceptionalism” lie once and for all.
Sadly we’ve been quite exceptional feeling with Covid. Trump made us number one! Of course he had help from many governors and the state news channel that played the virus down.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/12/health/britain-masks-intl-gbr/index.html Britain is nearly as bad as the United States in terms of mask compliance, and you’ve had multiple Premier League players violating quarantines to go party, so it’s pure luck that no club had an outbreak.
I am not debating that here in the UK we have had many issues of our own.
That is why I am so surprised at how much worse it has been handled in the US. Did not think it was possible.
Also…
Clearly not ‘luck’ with such a large sample size across such a range of sports.
Tom, politics aside I think its important to understand the American psyche versus that of Europeans. We are more independent, skeptical, and willing to take risks. This independent streak (for better or worse) is slowly dissipating over time, but remains a part of the American fabric. As much as some people want to make mask wearing politics, its not. Age is somewhat a factor, regions are somewhat a factor, socio-economic grouping is somewhat a factor but the reality is Americans of all stripes don’t like being told what to do. Asian cultures are much more compliant with mask wearing and other aspects of life. What I feel has changed is the increased polarization and decrease in civility. The increased polarization has required readers of content to understand underlying writer narratives to provide context. The dissipation of civility allows people to ignore the fact we wear masks as a collective curtesy- its overwhelming benefit is a reduction in viral shedding. Sadly, our MLB players haven’t gotten this message. I say this as an American patriot, and naturalized citizen of European birth. Stay well.
America’s response, or lack thereof, is embarrassing. Humiliating. And disastrous. However in the UK is had been demonstrably worse. Deaths per 100,000 shows the UK with the highest rate in the world at 68.22. The USA is a distant sixth at 42.83
That stat for the UK is of course very damning and as I say, a huge amount was not done right early on.
However, we are now down at 500-700 cases reported daily (this can all change quickly of course) and have managed to stage all the sporting events I mentioned without a spate of positives among players and staff.
I look at the stats for America and it scares me quite frankly, because it seems in no way under control, or even trending in the right direction.
Have to think that baseball should NOT be happening right now and I do not say that lightly.
For the case totals to be accurate, you’d need to have a mortality rate roughly ten times higher than the rest of the world, which obviously isn’t the case. That means that your reported case numbers are massively lower than the actual numbers. Note that I am not in any way absolving the awful way that the U.S. has handled this crisis, I’m simply pointing out that the U.K. has been similarly inept.
I didn’t realize that the UK was down to so few positive cases. That is vastly better than here.
It’s a little of everything. American exceptionalism making a significant number of people think this doesn’t apply to us. A total abdication of federal leadership. Decisions to reopen too early and resistance to closing down fully enough in the first place. Fragmentation that would exist among the states even with good federal leadership. Some bad luck.
I suspect the real answer is, American society has been over-leveraged, jury-rigged, held together with bubble gum, and carried forward on inertia for a long time. We don’t have any real social safety net, people can’t afford to miss a paycheck, and the number of people lacking meaningful access to health care is unfathomable anywhere else in the developed world. These things created an immense web of cracks and fissures that would have been blown wide open in any national catastrophe, and a pandemic is almost perfectly designed to exploit our specific failings.
I think it’s clear that only a bubble system will work at this point. Shut it all down for two weeks and open back up in a bubble environment.
A bubble is only as good as the willingness of the players to comply with rules. Would only take a few Lou Williams’ type incidents and the whole league could be infected. There are risks to that approach as well.
If the Phillies stay negative it will be a big point in favor of no bubble as we will have a test case on transmission between baseball teams.
a single case will prove diddly, though. As I’m sure you know. It will be taken by morons as proof that all is well and it won’t mean that at all. So please, son say that it does. Cuz it will be a single moment in time. Not a double blind study.
I’m really not understanding the handwringing and the appeals to shut things down. There was a plan at the outset, agreed to by both the owners and players – 60 man rosters existed to be able to replace an entire team that tests positive. That was the deal: a guy or even a team tests positive, there are enough players to show up again.
Is that a good plan? I don’t know. But it was the plan that the owners and players both said they were fine with. So you implement the plan. 17 guys are positive? Okay. 17 come from the taxi squad.
I’m just not sure why they should have made a plan in the first place if they’re not supposed to follow it the first time it’s needed. The players want to play. The owners want to have games. It’s a business, and for the short and long term health of the business, these games are important. So follow the plan and move on.
It wasn’t a good plan.
Duh.
Got it.
So stop reading Fangraphs. And ESPN. And the Athletic. Stop following teams on social media. Don’t watch games on television and MLB.TV. Don’t support the league who doesn’t have a good plan. Live out your convictions.
The plan isn’t new. You and I and everyone else knew this was the plan when we got excited for Opening Day and drafted fantasy teams and came here to read articles every day. We all understood what was going to happen (if you didn’t know players would test positive, you haven’t been alive in 2020), and we all knew the plan when it did.
We don’t get to sit in judgment at this point and attack ownership and players when we all happily endorsed them – with this plan in place – just three or four days ago. That’s lunacy.
And what about all of us who have been saying this was a terrible plan that would never work for the past 5-6 weeks now?
Characterizing this as a plan everyone endorsed is a gross overstatement. Many journalists, actual experts and just everyday fans criticized this plan from the jump. I mean, the Canadian govt kicked the Jays out of the country because they thought this plan was shit. It wasn’t exactly a fringe opinion.
What about all of you naysayers? Thank God you aren’t in charge of anything
Canada has a case fatlity rate, 7.7% twice that of the United States 3.5%. FYI.
Just visit John’s Hopkins to educate yourself for once.
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
lol. My god you are a liar as well. Those are not the same rates. Those are apples and oranges. Fatality rate and “case fatality rate, a ratio” are not the same. Ducking lying piece of shit man.
Fangraphs, I will not renew my sub if you don’t can this troll. He is ruining all rational discussion with his propaganda and lies. He is likely being paid to do it as well.
Ban him. Or I am fine and will tell the ten members of my fantasy league that I made buy subs to quit too.
I know you are a useless troll, but I’m bored so I will bite:
case fatality % doesnt really mean anything as a comparison. If you have 1 case and they die you have a case fatality rate of 100%. Is that worse than a country with a case fatality of 3.5% and 4.5 million cases? Barbados has a case/fatality of 6.4%. But thats because Barbados has 110 cases and 7 deaths. Where would you rather be? Barbados or US?
-the US has 46 deaths per 100K. Canada has 24.
-The US has a positive rate of 8.4% and has been as high as 18%. Canada’s positive rate is 2.9% and has never been over 7%
By any reasonable measure Canada is in much much better shape than the US and always has been.
Whose convictions are those? And who happily endorsed what?
You need to read what is written, not jump to conclusions about my convictions.
Speak for yourself. I didn’t do any of those things. So I am allowed to say I told you so.
I guess the question is whether the plan is to use the taxi squad for positives, or to also use it for people who need to be quarantined.
The plan sucks. It always sucked and was pretty much always doomed to fail. People have been saying that for weeks now. That’s the problem.
Has any baseball player even been hospitalized?
Oh shut up. It’s been three days. They will be and yo will change your screen name rather than discuss it. Loser.
I’ve bookmarked this thread so I can come back and have a good laugh after the World Series.
What about the Phillies tests coming back negative. Have you ever made an accurate prediction?
So it’s the owners fault for letting the players play? You guys would be crying foul if the owners forced them to play. Ultimately, nobody gets paid if they don’t play. The owners will survive that unscathed but some players might be in a big bind.
It’s the players health at risk. You can’t fault ownership for letting them decide.
So many problems with this take.
First, it’s not just the players health at risk. Risks they take are passed on to anyone they may come into contact with, including their families, ballpark and clubhouse employees, grocery store and restaurant workers, airport and hotel employees, and ALL of the people those people will come into contact with down the line.
Second, we’re not faulting the owners for wanting to play games per se. We’re faulting them for two things: 1) pushing forward when it should have been clear to any unbiased observer that there was no way to provide reasonable safety; and 2) not adopting, administering, and enforcing more stringent safety procedures when they did begin play.
Third, as I said before, just because the players can be faulted for underestimating the safety risks (whether due to bravado or what), that doesn’t absolve the owners of blame. Both can be wrong at the same time.
You did get one thing right, though. It is absolutely correct that we would object if the owners forced the players to play against their will. That would be slavery.
Words have meaning. Slavery means forcing people to do work for no pay. You have to create new meanings for words to hold your view point.
The thing is, every single one of these people you’re describing have choices. If they consider the threat of covid to great to function normally, by all means stay home.
The fact the CC AFC thinks the virus is too dangerous doesn’t mean he, and people like him, get to dictate the rest of the world’s behavior. Stay home if it’s too dangerous. And let the rest of the planet excercise their free will to decide how to act. Pretty simple.
This kind of take is why we can’t get a handle on the virus. Your decision to go out because you determine the risk to be acceptable to you doesn’t only affect you. It’s called a “negative externality.” Pretty simple.
Please point out any law or government decree that major league baseball is violating by playing games?
Can you point out anyone with authority who says that baseball players cannot go out and play baseball for any reason whatsoever?
Strawman
So you can’t name one single law MLB is violtating?
You can’t name one single scientific authority call for MLB to cease playing?
The only thing MLB is violating is your opinion?
You are the ultimate user of Strawmen. I said nothing about whether they were violating any laws or whether any particular person or institution called on the season to end. Nor did jwa05001.
Contribute to the actual conversation that is being had or piss off, Alex Jones.
You specialize in intellectual dishonesty.
You posted a sequence of claims and I questioned each and every one directliy and to the point.
You respond with nothing but ad hominem and cowardly charges.
Fo example. I asked you who you claimed to speak for when you referred to “we’re” and you call that a strawman. I call that pure cowardice. and running away from the question.
You said that major league players endanged a long list of individuals and I asked you how baseball players endanger the people in those groups any more than any other people they deal with. Again you respond with cowardice claiming my direct pointed question is a strawman.
You stated clearly that the owners are guilty of safety risks.I asked you to specifically explain this by stating what laws they violated, what scienctific admonishments they ignored. You again have the cowardly response of callling that direct and pointed question a straw man.
You can’t point out in any way shape or a safety violation of the owners. You can’t point out how baseball players present any more danger to the public than anyone else.
As a matter of fact you can’t suppport any of your opinions with facts when they get called into queston.
Yep. The right opinion. Opinions are just that. But they can be right or wrong. Yours is plainly wrong and you should be banned for it. There is no first amendment in a private website. You deserve to be tossed. Period. You won’t allow a real discussion. Good bye I hope. The losers that be will lose many subscriptions if they keep you on.
Please ban this guy. He is not interested in answer to his questions. He is a troll.
3 reasooons is sugar
3 teaspoons of salt.
That gives you a flavor that matches this prick’s attitude.
Free will, my ass. Free will has nothing to do with it. You don’t have free will to decide whether or not I contract the virus. Not when it’s a public health hazard. And what you’re looking for is legal or illegal, or safe or dangerous.
Don’t you have free will to forego contact with other human beings so you will not contract the virus?
Is government, any institution, or any individual forcing you have to have contact with potentially infected human beings?
A number of questions for you.
1st-Are the players forced to play or can they freely choose to opt out and not play?
2nd-Are the clubhouse employees, the grocery store workers, the restaurant workers the airport workers, the hotel workers facing any greater risk from a baseball player than from any other human being using their services?
3rd-When you post “we’re” who are you claiming to speak for?
4th-You claim that baseball is unsafe right now. Do you believe the baseball players who do not opt out of playing agree with you? Do you believe the players on the Marlins who do not opt out after the recent positive tests agree with you?
5th-What exactly are you blaming the owners for?
6th-Has the major league players association made proposals for players safetty that major league baseball is not currentliy following?
7th-How could owners force players to play against their will?
I think we’re within 48 hours of either a mass cancellation/postponement of games or a player revolt on the scale that forces Manfred’s hands. The only uncertainty is whether we’re within 48 hours of the Marlins situation repeating itself on a second team. Unfortunately, I think the smart money says “yes.”
I’m so upset at the lack of leaders willing to take responsibility at every stage of this mess. MLB’ is totally content to “next-man-up”ing this, and Mattingley, who is paid millions of dollars to act as the leader for his players, feels free to take a complete pass. This, of course, fits into a broader culture where the federal government pushes as much as possible to the state governments, which push as much as possible to the local governments, who have no real latitude in controlling the major businesses, which push responsibility to their employees and customers.
That’s how we end up with Miguel Rojas, a 30-something with (presumably) no public health or medical training, being the key decision maker in the health decisions of dozens of other individuals.
As a fellow 30-something with no public health or medical training, this is just bonkers.
Can we have some real leadership? Anywhere? Lives literally depend on it.
I think they are going to start cancelling series wholesale and declare that the playoffs will be seeded by winning percentage. Which is probably the plan they should’ve had in the first place. That will allow them to at least shamble along with some games being played.
Though ownership might resist this if it results in them paying players not to play.
Already done. The Marlins will not play all week and the Yanks-Phils series is cancelled.
I don’t understand why they didn’t just realign divisions and move teams in the middle of nowhere [Rockies / Houston / Rangers / Both Florida Teams / Braves / Seattle] to minor league stadiums to accommodate less traveling. Minor leagues are not playing, with the universal DH it’s not like it’d “shake things up” Toronto was already in Buffalo, just move someone like the Mets and Phillies to the AL East : Yankees, Phillies, Blue Jays, Red Sox, Mets. And you do the same for the NL East : Washington, Baltimore, Braves, Marlins and Rays. With the Braves, Marlins, and Rays, you have 2 AAA clubs in Virginia and a AA in NJ, as well as another AA near Virginia. No one is using them.
Your main objective is to play games and get a season in, who cares about the dimensions of the parks, no one is allowed in the stadiums anyway. Sure it’d screw with playoff odds and the like, but they make money, the players make money, the people get something to watch. And the season won’t really “count” anyway.
Really good piece, Jay. I want to call attention to the incubation period, which you rightly point out, but which I think hasn’t gotten enough attention more broadly. Here is a typical (non-MLB financed) timeline of infection:
Day 1 (exposure)
Day ~5 (begins to be infectious)
Day 8 (gets a test and begins quarantine)
Day 15 (gets test results)
Day 16 (close contacts traced)
In this scenario, the one plaguing the country as a whole right now, the issue is that test results don’t come fast enough. Because test results take 7+ days, we can’t trace the contacts of those infected in time to prevent them infecting others. The situation in baseball looks more like this:
Day 1 (exposure and negative test)
Day 2 (D1 negative test results)
Day 3 (test)
Day 4 (begins being infectious and D3 negative test results)
Day 5 (test)
Day 6 (positive test results and begins quarantining)
Day 7 (tracing of contacts and additional testing for anyone potentially exposed)
Day 8 (negative test results for all those exposed; they’re not giving off the disease yet and don’t register a positive test).
Day 9 (more testing)
Day 10 (maybe some positive test results?)
MLB’s extremely robust testing protocols (which are quite good!) actually create a different problem, which is simply the reality of how the virus incubates in humans. If you are infected, you begin being infectious at some indeterminate point between 2 and 14 days after exposure. You likely won’t experience symptoms before being infectious.
So unless you’re just lucky, even asymptomatic testing spaced 48 hours apart isn’t enough to ensure you don’t spread the disease to others. It creates a 72-hour window (between the taking of the test and the delivery of the next test’s results in which you could begin to be infectious before you would know it. That’s potentially up to 3 days of exposing your teammates, your coaches, your clubhouse staff, etc.
Which day do I ingest bleach tho
Where are you completely safe from the spread of the disease? Can you point out an industry that provides more safety to the individuals involved in it that major league baseball? Are delivery people tested for the virus on a regular basis? Are grocery store workers tested?
Does anyone know how many MLB players are in the hosptial right now?
What percentage of MLB players testing positive are asymptomatic?
Lol, you’re not going to get an answer on that from this crowd
The answers to these two questions would provide a basis for an informed discussion.
Van him or lose a dozen subscriptions. Period. This guy is ruining the experience of your site. You can claim “free speech” bit that is not a thing on private publications. End this now please or my entire fantasy team is gone. Unacceptable that you let him post over 100 times in this thread. Period.
Don’t know what you mean by that – to date I have not heard of any players or personnel being hospitalized. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened, since it’s up to them if their health information is public, but we probably at least would’ve heard “an undisclosed player is in the hospital”. It doesn’t even sound like Rodriguez is in the hospital (myocarditis on its own is treatable at home with over the counter anti-inflammatories, my wife had it from a random viral infection…again, taken with the grain of salt that Covid may well be different).
That being said, most of these cases are new, and it does take some time before the hospitalizations show up.
How many of the Marlins test negative compared to the 17 positive cases? Do any of them even have a temperature? How many are asymptomatic? How many have symptoms?
If you are going to write an article claiming that major league baseball is in a full blown crisis wouldn’t you want to have answers to these basic questions?
We don’t have that information. If we did we’d share it. Your implication that we both have the answer and wouldn’t share it suggests partisan lunacy.
Partisan for what? Please point out in any of my questions anything that is partisan? Asking questions is partisan to you?
Somoene writes an article that says Major League Basesball is in a full blown crisis and I start asking questons.
Is anyone hospitalized? This isn’t a relevant question?
What was the ratio of positive to negative tests on the Marlins? That isn’t a relevant question?
Does anyone have temperature? That isn’t relevant?
What is the ratio of aysmptomatic to those with symptoms among the 17 positive tests? That isn’t a relevant question?
Maybe the question is, why wasn’t this information included before writing an article claiming a full blown crisis in major league baseball?
Considering that we’re not even allowed to know if an MLB player has COVID-19 unless they consent to releasing that info, I would guess that the only person who knows are people in MLB’s medical office, and that their information is likely out of date.
You don’t think the Marlins have to share their medical information with MLB?
if I had known you were just a straight up troll who pretends he can’t read I don’t think I would have given you a good faith answer. And yet, here we are. Just you and me, bud.
You should have stopped with “If I had known'” because that says everything about you. If you have only known the basics. If you had only know you were out of your depth. If you had only known you were posting from ignorance.
If you had only known..
Clay? Is that you?
No, it’s me.
This is wild. I literally can’t tell if you lack basic reading comprehension skills or if you are pretending to so you can get a rise out of people. The word salad of this response could be either, too.
He is a troll. Someone posted the definition of ‘sea-lioning’ above. Apparently, that’s how this guy gets his kicks.
There are divergent opinions throughout the discussion, he’s just trying to ruin the discussion, in the guise of faux-open-mindedness.
“Plans are overrated” — Magnus Carlsen
Everyone knows you can’t prepare for everything in an initial plan. It is foolhardy to think one plan will work in its entirety. Plans are to move projects forward. Baseball needed to move forward. They’re addressing their first trial.
What I find disagreeable is why this article and a good many others (I saw one on Yahoo that was contemptible at best) have a fixation on pointing the finger and blaming anyone responsible for unforeseeable failures. And then, on that basis, discredit them as capable decision-makers, but not even have the decency to provide anything but a “half baked” solution.
If you can’t provide that level of criticism, I think it is best to be just reporting impartial facts.
Everything about this was entirely foreseeable. Many of us foresaw it, in writing, on this very site in fact.
Seriously. Several people in close contact catch highly contagious virus is like the most foreseeable result of a pandemic.
What is the ratio of positive tests results to negative test results on the Marlins players and staff tested? Did everyone test positive? If not how many tested negative?
Which is the most damning part of everything here. If the avg fan can look at this plan and go “hold up. This sounds like a terrible idea” then MLB is either utterly incompetent, insanely greedy or some combination of both.
I’ve said it before but I will say it again. I’m not sure how the Canadian govt rejecting the Jays request to play games in Canada wasnt a bigger story. It was a qualified, independent entity rejecting MLB’s plan on the grounds of public health. That is a damning red flag.
Why hasn’t the average baseball player opt out of playing?
Like most of your superficial questions today, easy answer: because they make their money by playing, and because people have a bias towards downplaying their own risks.
Please stop posting. OTOH, you are motivating me to finally make a Chrome extension to hide FG commenters who add no value.
I would expand on your answer and say that they fell the risk to their permanent or even short term health is minimal and that the reward of providing their loved ones with a living and furthering their careers make the choice easy.
You wondered in other posts why I ask quesitons.
You genralized statement that “people have a bias towards downplaying their own risks” is in a word, stupid.
You own personal conceit no doubt leaves you believing you no better for baseball players than they know fo themselves and I’m sure that list of peple who need to follow your advice instead of their own informed opinion is virtually infinite.
You should be careful adding that Chrome extension. Your posts will immediately disappear.
I know that we are generally a pretty informed group of commenters but “anonymous commenters with the names docgooden85 and Shirtless George Brett know more than billion-dollar companies and the federal government” is pretty damning. If we had access to enough information to make the right judgment, so did everyone else in positions of authority.
Oh, corpgov knew. They just would rather people died so they can take their stuff.
Literally how government and big business work.
You just have to watch one meeting to see how oblivious and out of touch some politicians are. its not surprising at all that they have failed spectacularly (and in some cases actively worked against public interest) when it comes to the pandemic. Not to mention the rampant partisanship that strangles any attempt at legislation.
MLB/businesses though, they knew. They 100% knew. They just figured it was worth the risk because they wanted to make money. And the NFL is going to be the next ones to do it. Mark my words.
If everything was entirely foreseeable how do you explain the fact that such an overwhelving majority of players, over 95%, chose to play instead of opting out? Are the players who chose not to opt out just stupid people compared to you? Have any players chosen to opt out in light of this Marlins situation? has anyone on the Marlins decided to opt out in the aftermath?
Dear JAQbot, do you literally ever say anything that’s not a question? Do you have a mortal fear of periods? Do you think “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” really works as a one-man show?
Yes, I do.
Are you informed enough to answer any of the questions I asked or do you just post opinion?
This is very much like ELIZA except that ELIZA was programmed to help you discover your feelings and this one is programmed to give you the feeling of being annoyed.
More like Uncleverbot.
Made me laugh. Well done.
Did you see Freddie Freeman go four for five tonight!
You know , the same Freddie you used as our poster child for how the covid virus was ruining this baseball season.
What the heck if Freddie doing fully recovered from the worst disease ever to stalk the planet and then go four for five against the Rays.
Wipe the egg off of you face kid.
ESPN now reporting that 2 Phillies players have tested positive, and their upcoming series is delayed. How are those eggs?
You saw that the Miami Marlins were going to have a player go out to the clubs in Atlanta? Because that would be amazing. But if you mean that there were always going to be risks of some spread of COVID on a team, then you haven’t brought anything new to the table. The league knew there would be risks and obviously didn’t know where it was going to hit.
The league had set up protocols to keep COVID out by testing everyone often enough. But I don’t think they were expecting a player or players to disregard aspects of the system so blatantly. And once the virus incubates among a group of supposedly COVID free guys, all they can do is quarantine and wait it out. But I hardly see how this article needed to go so far beyond the necessary remedy: simply tracing everyone and suffocating the spread between players in the league. Which it seems the league has done; had this article not jumped down their throats before the whole story was out, then we wouldn’t have some clearly stupid partisan argument.
Exactly. It’s an invisible infectious disease. For the first time in history human beings are being expected to: have everything figured out about how to have prevented it or shut down everything if it isn’t prevented. Perspective with this diseases has been completely lost.
it’s difficult to imagine that infection rates could be higher later this year than they are now.
It really isn’t that hard to imagine. That’s part of the problem.
Yeah, I thought that statement was particularly unsupported. If anything I would deem it likely that, while infection rates will have peaked or gone down in the areas of the country they are highest now, those areas would’ve been replaced by new hot spots. There’s nothing to suggest this won’t bounce around this country like waves in a pool.
Though, as long as we’re speculating, it’s also possible that the hardest hit places develop some level of herd immunity. The numbers on wide-scale antibody tests in NY have been crazy, and correlating that with the low infection rate there currently makes one think…
Yeah, NY had seroprevalence of 25% in late April. Tests in May had that up to 45%, though that wasn’t a random sample. I think NY has achieved HIT and traveling NYers are a big cause of the spread. Mass crowds in protests, bar activity, and being indoors in the warmer South is causing spikes there. The death rate down South is far lower since it’s hitting a younger population and remedies have gotten a lot better since the early days. I agree so much with your points above on people assessing risk and making their own decisions. Covid has a .003% fatality rate. For most people, Covid presents as a cold or as nothing at all. Also agree with jdbolick’s point above that mask compliance in the UK is far worse than the US and the rest of Europe not much better.
As for MLB, keep playing. Almost everyone here wanted the games, MLBPA wanted the games more than MLB (several owners didn’t want a 2020 season at all).
it seems that major league baseball players made a risk reward assessment of playing or opting out this year and the majority of them reached a conclusion similar to your opinions.
Statement! Fifteen-love.
Is this a meme? Seriously asking as I don’t do the social media thing
Neither do I.
Literally 0.4% of NY’s whole population already died (32K recorded COVID deaths, 8.4M population), and you’re rolling with 0.003%?
0.003% death rate *would* imply a 12690% seroprevalence, good for herd immunity. 25% or even 50% immunity, though, is not enough for herd immunity with this virus’s observed level of transmissibility.
(It’s also not at all clear that any useful natural herd immunity can even exist. It doesn’t for the other circulating coronaviruses, where people can re-catch the same strain soon enough that it keeps circulating. Note for the cheap seats, “everybody gets it and the vulnerable are already dead” is not how “herd immunity” is defined.)
Do you believe that New York’s fatality rate is shared by the entire nation?
What proof is there that idnividual can re-catch the same strain?
What disease do human beings not acquire immunity against?
Do you think Freddie Freeman believes he has an acquired immunity since he claimed to be near death but is out there playing baseball in the aftermath?
What evidence is there that you’re not a bot?
Do you believe that you have free will?
Why do 2-3 year old children ask questions incessantly?
How many ttravs does it take to fill the Albert Hall?
Small numerical correction: NYC has had 22977 deaths in an 8.4M population.
NY State has had 32645 deaths but in a 19.45M population.
The percentages are .27% and .17% respectively.
Your larger point is correct (I rather suspect that @Shalesh has confused rates and percentages).
You are citing New York state deaths against New York City population numbers. It’s 32k against 19.5 million, or .16%
Not exactly. Herd Immunity has inputs which include the amount of infection and death you’re willing to accept (I suspect mine is higher than yours but not as high as Govs Cuomo & Murphy who turned nursing homes into funeral homes). Many simply use 1-(1/R0) as their HIT measure since the goal is to drive R0 < 1.
One of the points of my original comment was that the difference in outbreaks following protests all over the US seems to follow differences in which cities have already gone through their first wave. In other words, cities which had not had a first wave (LA, Houston, Miami) spiked much further than those who already had like NYC, Wash DC, Detroit. CO is a mystery to me — they re-opened at the same time as FL & TX, had protests, and haven't had a new outbreak. And yes, Houston & Miami's bar openings contributed perhaps more than the protests did. That may be the difference in the explosive growth in those two cities vs merely the strong growth in LA.
NYC and coronavirus is a good test case to see if people are innumerate. When 0.25% of the population of NYC has already died, the only way the death rate can be less than 0.25% is if NYC literally has a bigger population that we know about and 100% of the population got it. And since the first one, if it is off, is not off by much, and the second one is definitely not true.
Every single seroprevalence study in a COVID hot spot with a modern hospital system and extensive social distancing is suggesting that it’s between 0.4%-1%. People arguing for something out of that range are going way, way out on a limb and often using bad math to get there.
Math Failure (Florida):
Dead 5,972
Fatality Rate (Yours): 0.003%
Calculated Infected: 5,972/.003% = 199 million.
# of Positive Tests: 423,855
# of Florida Residents: 21.84M
Based on raw data, fatality = 5972/423855 = 1.4%
Some scientists say that we are undercounting positives by 10.
So let’s be generous and say that 4.2M people, not 424k have been infected. That gets you to 0.14%.
0.003%/.14% = 47
Therefore, you are off between 47 and 470 times.
Stop spreading misinformation.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18oVRrHj3c183mHmq3m89_163yuYltLNlOmPerQ18E8w/htmlview#
Fair, I grabbed something I saw on social media. Statista has 45.93M adults in the US aged between 25-34, which I’m using for MLB players. Of those, 935 have died of Covid-19 for a rate of 0.002%. In CA, there have been 164,764 cases for those between 18-34. Of those, 108 have died. So of those infected, 0.06% of those in the 18-34 age group die. That seems low to me, but I haven’t compared to other morbidities for the MLB Players’ age group. Feel free to do so.
https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-by-Sex-Age-and-S/9bhg-hcku
https://www.statista.com/statistics/241488/population-of-the-us-by-sex-and-age/
https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/COVID-19/COVID-19-Cases-by-Age-Group.aspx
***Note I have the same comment with links to CDC, Statista, and CADPH awaiting moderation.***
Fair, I grabbed something I saw on social media. Statista has 45.93M adults in the US aged between 25-34, which I’m using for MLB players. Of those, CDC says 935 have died of Covid-19 for a rate of 0.002%. In CA, there have been 164,764 cases for those between 18-34. Of those, 108 have died. So of those infected, 0.06% of those in the 18-34 age group die. That seems low to me, but I haven’t compared to other morbidities for the MLB Players’ age group. Feel free to do so.
You missed the big news, though. How did that happen?
Sure, Covid has a 0.003 percent mortality rate but you didn’t mention that it has a 21.6 percent immortality rate. Over 1 in 5 who contract the virus end up being impossible to kill. They’ll live forever. I’ve read that another 12 percent develop the ability to regenerate body parts. 8.4 percent develop x-ray vision and another 1.7 percent have been seen engaging in a rudimentary form of flying.
The truth is that this Coronavirus is the best thing that ever happened to humanity.
I would go even further and say that they WILL be higher later this year than they are right now. And likely as soon as next week. Until some major changes happen, which have not occurred yet, the trendline is going in one direction.
Just because masks are more effective at source control does not mean they are ineffective at preventing infection and keeping their wearer’s safe if properly worn. They aren’t perfect, but they’re still very good.
Among outpatient health care personnel, N95 respirators vs medical masks saw no significant difference in the incidence of laboratory-confirmed influenza in this clinical trial.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2749214
Outside of aerosol generating procedures, or where a patient has suspected or confirmed COVID-19, medical masks as part of a PPE regimen are still the standard of care.
Stay safe: wash your hands and wear a mask.
Influenza and SARS-CoV-2 are distinct viruses with completely different characteristics. Influenza is transmitted on particles roughly 2-2.5 μm, which is why surgical masks are effective at filtering influenza in coughs by infected patients into petri dishes, yet the same experiment was conducted by South Korean researchers on COVID patients and surgical masks did not successfully filter SARS-CoV-2. That wasn’t surprising given that studies have consistently found surgical masks to be ineffective at filtering anything below 1 μm. Meanwhile cloth masks are terrible at filtering anything.
The reason people should wear a surgical or cloth mask for SARS-CoV-2 is to reduce the distance that exhaled particles travel, but it’s not going to prevent them from escaping or entering the way that surgical masks do for influenza. So wear a mask, but continue be conscious of social distancing while you’re doing it. Frankly, baseball players should not be sharing the dugout during games. The Premier League and Bundesliga had its players spaced out in the stands.
FWIW, I follow a cancer doc who writes about covid, she says that masks do help–even cloth ones.
They help because they reduce the distance of viral shedding. So instead of your cough potentially infecting someone six feet away, a mask might reduce the distance to one foot. But unless you’re wearing something N95 or better, SARS-CoV-2 is still getting through the mask and therefore it is vital to maintain social distancing while wearing them.
Just saw something today about masks helping the wearer because they reduce the % of individual viruses that get into your system, which makes a difference in how severe your reaction is.
Has the players association asked MLB to move the players out of the dugouts?
Did Darryl Strawberry hit better on days when he ate Wheaties?
Is there any data source to answer your question? My original question remains, has the players association aksed Major Leauge Baseball to move the players out of the dugouts?
Honestly, I think this is a bot.
I wonder if anyone on here reading your posts believes that you think.
They at least think I’m a person lol
I never said you weren’t a person. I just said you weren’t capable of thought.
If the study you’re talking about was by Bae et al, it was retracted because several of the measurements were below the limit of detection of their equipment, making the results uninterpretable:
Original Paper: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-1342
Retraction: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/L20-0745
There is a workaround… Each team’s taxi squad and the MLB squad are two separate cohorts with limited contact between them. MLB should suspend the restrictions around the 40 man roster for the season (Joe Doyle also suggested this idea on Twitter). In this case they should sit the full Marlins MLB cohort for a quarantine period and just substitute in the taxi squad. Players will get MLB service time and salary for the games they play. No one needs to be released… The Marlins might lose some games 13-2 for a week, but at least it won’t screw up everyone else’s scheduling.
Further to this – there should be one or two monitors with each team on the MLB payroll ensuring distancing compliance. High five, you start your next AB with a strike on you. Pitcher spits, that’s a ball. On the bus from the hotel, empty seats between each player. Masking at all times with really limited exceptions. (IE, an OF shouldn’t need to wear a mask while in OF…)
“How dare they get service time!” –some puke in Manfred’s ear, probably.
Has the players association proposed such rules? Don’t the players agree with you that safety requires such steps?
You either are completely unwilling to do your own research, or are psyopically spamming questions in order to confuse people.
Actually I would say that your posts are completely devoid of research and that is why I question them.
You have no evidence whatsoever that the players union has made any such proposals.
If being a good team mate requires integrity, responsibility, transparency, “having team mates‘” backs, team leaders should hold a team meeting and ask every player to attest to “I won’t practice unsafe behavior and if I do, I will voluntarily fess up to the rest of the team. If I test positive, I’ll cooperate 100% with contract tracing and share that information with my team mates.”
How do you know such meetings did not already occur?
I don’t know that they didn’t occur. I was stating an opinion of what I would expect from team mates. Pre-attestation is a powerful tool to direct behavior. Waiting until after the fact can lead to further bad behavior (i.e. not cooperating with contact tracing, etc.)
If it was the case that the Marlins didn’t inform the Phillies, that is evidence that teams aren’t forthcoming.
So you have no idea whatseover but yet you post on a premise you have no support for.
Wise consul is not a concept you are familiar with.
C’mon guys, this is obviously a bot. Mod, please.
Actually flesh and blood. Are you ever right?
Drewsylvania owes you an apology. You are a human being who spends his days aping the behaviour of a bot.
You seem to enjoy behaving like a bot. It is sad that this brings you pleasure, but diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks.
Actually I just like exposing click bait articles like this one for the cheap, baseless sensationalism that they are.
The Phillies tests came back negative for the SECOND DAY in a row.
The Phillies resume play tomorrow, Friday.
The Marlins resume play Monday.
.
Phillies cancel games through the weekend.
The thoroughly politicized CDC guidelines are a joke. I hope they can get through the season but it’s already questionable legitimacy is even more in question now.
After reading the article and the comments it seems the premise of the article, that MLB has a full-fledged crisis, is full of holes.
1st-No one knows the ratio of positive tests to negative tests. We know that 17 Marlins tested positive and have no idea about the negative number of tests.
2nd-We do not know the ratio of asymptomatic tests to those with symptoms among the 17 positive tests
3rd-We do not even know if any of the players has a high temperature and the protocols do call for the periodic taking of boby temperature.
4th-We have no evidence that any player has been hospitalized at all.
5th-No major league player has announced they are opting out in light of the 17 positive tests
6th-Not one Marlins player has opted out in light of the 17 positive tests.
The thread is full of comments with recriminations that reveal the agenda of the poster and have little if nothing to do with the article.
“They didn’t wear masks during a TV interview”
“The owners are greedy”
“Everyone knows its stupid to have a season”
and the like.
A deeply unimpressive claim to a “full-blown” crisis with a dearth of evidence to support it.
One last thought, few come prepared to answer any questioning of their opinions and the level of intellectual dishonest and cowardice is high.
After reading the article and the comments, it looks like the title of the article is MLB There is a Complete Crisis, Full of Holes.
First of all – No one knows the positive test rate for negative tests. We know that 17 Marlins have tested positive and have no idea of some of the negativity of the tests.
Second, we don’t know the rate of asymptomatic tests for people with symptoms out of 17 positive tests.
3. We don’t even know if a player has heavy precipitation and if the protocol should be called on Bobby’s Periodic Temperatures.
4-There is no evidence that a player in hospital is hospitalized.
Thursday – no big league player said they decide in light of 17 positive tests
6-No Marlins player will decide in light of 17 positive tests.
The thread is full of comments with complaints that reveal the agendas of the posters and there is little that can be done if they have nothing to do with the story.
“They don’t wear masks in a TV interview”
“The owner is greedy”
“Everyone knows it’s stupid to have a season”
and others.
Deep and uneven demand for the “full” crisis with the breakdown of supporting evidence.
One thought, the little ones are ready to answer any examination of their prospects, and the level of intellectual dishonesty and cowardice is high.
You’re the biggest coward on here lol
How unoringinal of you . I’m shocked.
considering that none of those points are relevant, I think you just wasted your day spamming a comment section. you would have been better off saying “I don’t think suspending the season of a team is a crisis in and of itself” because at least that addresses that article.
You post refutes nothing. In fact your post says nothing about the matter. The fact that you being your post talking about relevance and then offer nothing relevant. What a surprise.
The assertion of this article is that the MLB has a crisis on its hands. You make five points, none of which are relevant. To refute the post, you would have to find the propositions that this post is based upon and then show that one or more of them are incorrect–none of these points contradict of the propositions stated in the article. This is basic 101 stuff. I don’t know what you thought you were doing, but it’s not relevant.
Actually the article said “Full Blown Crisis”.
Every one of my points was relevant.
The premise of the article continues to deteriorate rapidly today as the Phillies tests came back negative and the source of the Marlins infection emerges, players violating protocol.
You are left to wipe the article’s egg off your face.
I’ve now read all 58 of your comments, and while I realize you must get some deep emotional satisfaction from being this way, I don’t see how anything you’ve written contributes to the conversation or community. If it is true, as you say “few come prepared to answer any questioning of their opinions and the level of intellectual dishonest and cowardice is high.” then why associate with the dishonest and cowardly?
You are using the anonymity of a comment section to take potshots– There’s no attempt whatsoever to change minds–in fact, you haven’t even stated your own opinions so as to hold them up to scrutiny. Perhaps a moment of self-reflection would help?
I just read your last post to me. I will quote you from it, “I don’t feel compelled to engage further.
So when you say something it can be safely ignored because of course you do not mean it. You say you are going engage no further, but you said it so it means nothing.
Now you claim power to judge for the community. A mark of your humility no doubt.
Intelllectual dishonesty is cowardice. You are not anonymous?
It is impossible to change minds of people who do not rigorously inquire for the truth. You can’t change minds of people who can’t withstand basic questioning.
I stated my case clearly. You have not responded to it directly at any time in any way in any form.
Supertramp wrote a song who title clearly describes the truth here, “crisis, what crisis?”
By the way, did any Marlins players opt out yet given that the franchise and all of baseball is in a full-fledged crisis?
Pretty sophisticated bot. Nevertheless, when your algorithm stumbled across “crisis, what crisis”, it didn’t latch on to the fact that “Crisis? What Crisis?” is the title of a Supertramp ALBUM…not a song.
You had a good run, had some of us fooled into thinking you were an actual human troll for a little while at first. The coder who wrote you should include this in their Github portfolio – they may very well get a job and be able to pay Mom something for the space they occupy in her basement.
You are desperate. I have ingrown hairs older than you. My Mother the Car.
You are up to 84 now, with the frequency and intensity of the insults increasing.
Phllies tests came back negative. What is happening to your “full-blown crisis”.
Pity you can’t read as fast as you can insult. Did I say full-blown crisis? Nope. Now, if you want to trash my arguments again, I re-posted earlier this morning and if you have any complaints about the logic of any of them and can coherently argue against them, by all means, go to it.
The source of the Marlin’s outbreak comes to light as well, players breaking protocol.
The full blown crisis myth deteriorates rapidly because it had no basis in fact in the first place.
The only question you should be asking is why when you show up somewhere it turns out everyone there has somewhere else they all the sudden need to be. Willingness to spam the entire comments with nonsensical, ridiculous questions doesn’t make you smart. Leave the Socratic method to law school professors. Engage with your own opinions and facts. Nobody owes you shit in response and the reason they don’t respond is because you’re questions are insincere, rambling nonsense.
I know exactly why I showed up in this thread, to question the premise of this article. I stayed in the thread to question gaping flaws in posted opinions. I am here now to confront intellectaully dishonest cowards.
Actaully the Socratic method is the pervue of philosophy professors, but it doesn’t seem you are familiar with the method or professors.
Lots of questions, absolutely zero content other than nonsense, repetitive questions that can only be answered fully by those involved, and lies. How about this one: ” Not one single major league players has opted out.” At least 12 major league players have opted out including Buster Posey, Felix Hernandez, Mike Leake, etc. So troll somewhere else.
Here is more “zero content” for you.
The Phillies tests cam back negative. The full blown crisis peters out.
The opt out in my post referred to those who opted out AFTER the Marlins positive test and the answer is ZERO, NADA, ZILCH, NONE.
Not even a Marlin has opted out.
FYI, there are 60 players on rosters for 30 teams, 1800 players total.
So divide your numerator of “12 opting out players” by the denominator of “1800 opting in” players and look at the .67% of players who opted out.
I wish I could play poker with someone like you who thinks .67% is something to bet on.
The gaping hole in your argument is that it doesn’t include your mailing address, SS#, birthdate, legal name, and internet search history. I guess you’ll answer my question because you, sir, are no coward, amirite?
Pitiful.
What’s going on in baseball seems like an extended exercise in what economists call rational choice. Most owners want there to be games (and the revenues that flow from them) and most players want to earn money and service time. The agreement they made (imperfect, but viable at the time) reflects that. It built in redundancies/roster flexibility to adapt to what most people must of thought of as inevitable–some positive tests. Each player can be a rational actor–they can decide for themselves whether they want to play or opt out. To anticipate the serial “how many” etc. questions, let’s acknowledge that some already have, choosing based on individual factors at the time they made those choices. Preexisting medical conditions, pregnant wives, etc. To the credit of the original negotiators, they recognized that some players should be permitted to opt out without losing the economic benefits. What they also realized is that the individual player situation is not static. There may be circumstances in which a player starts the year, and then decides to opt out later. Again, the redundancies built into the agreement deal with that. Why would a player opt out later? Because of some state of facts they learn after their initial choice that alters their conclusion as a rational actor. Baseball itself has already made one “rational actor” economic decision by pausing Miami’s schedule. We can all expect these choices (to reschedule, to cancel , to opt out, to adapt with new policies, etc.) to continue to occur through the course of this season. What we have in front of us right now is the sum of all previous choices/agreements. It’s not (necessarily) permanent and will (and must) adapt on the fly, where necessary. . Only someone deeply invested in a conclusion would insist otherwise.
Of course, all of this is done with the backdrop of society at large and the communities that house these teams also dealing with policy choices. These rational choices can have effects beyond just the world of baseball.
Agree completely. A consistent approach to public health decisions is incredibly important, and the teams need to work with local officials to arrive at protocols that make sense for everyone.
I say this because in my town (DC, fairly unique in that the government is basically akin to a state government), most people are required to wear masks when they will come into contact with others. We are also told that if we visit any of 27 states which might as well have been chosen at random, we are to self quarantine for 2 weeks. To be told this, and then to see baseball players and personnel come in from all over and not come close to following anything resembling good social distancing practices is just a bit infuriating. I mean, personally I love baseball and that part of me is happy it is back, but bending over backwards to make exceptions for a billionaire owner and millionaire players who flaunt basic steps is garbage leadership from our Mayor in my opinion.
I mean, it’s boundedly rational, limited by the information processing constraints of the agent. In this case, the agent is the Marlins, who are the natural endpoint to the “bigger fool” theorem. Our sport’s KB toys did the typical cheap team thing and put the team up in a wedding hotel. Who knows if that’s HOW they got the virus, but it’s one in a series of decisions that are all too typical of a team that just doesn’t want to be bothered with putting any resources towards fielding a decent team. They’re not even making a laughable attempt at a good faith effort, there’s no effort there at all.
Remember when people liked Derek Jeter? He’s the mayor of Shark City now.
The silver lining here is that the Marlins don’t have a team to start with.
Reali on ESPN asked the question of whether the response would have been different if it had been the Yankees testing positive.
It was clearly a rhetorical question.
FIRST PLACE MARLINS!! Clearly the plan was to win a couple out of the gate then shut it down for the duration and glide into the playoffs with that stellar .667 win %!
at a dime a comment FG would be fully endowed with one more column like this …… great article shining the light on one more part of our world which, like the rest of us, is making it up and trying to figure it out….
Another as yet to be named Marlin tested positive this morning.
The basis of this article continues to deteriorate in real time.
The Phillies covid tests came back negative.
The Phillies renew their season Friday.
The source of the Marlins infection, breaking protocol, becomes public.
The haters who inaccurately blamed MLB’s safety standards stand exposed.
So, this is NOT a full blown crisis for MLB.
It is an embarrassing episode for the Marlins.
What a tragedy for all the baseball haters in this thread who so desperately wanted to see this baseball season shutdown.
Many comments in this thread will grow more and more embarrassing for their original posters as time passes and the World Series concludes this fall.
Life Frank Sinantra sang, some people get their kicks stomping on a dream. Haters of this baseball seaosn are blinded by their hate.
Time to move those goalposts!
The Phillies just had at least two positives, Mr. Sanctimonious Know-It-All.
And now the Cardinals do.