More Coronavirus Infections on Marlins, Phillies, and Now Cardinals Mean More Scrambling — and More Questions — for MLB
The impact of the Marlins’ outbreak of coronavirus and Sunday’s ill-fated decision to allow the team to play the Phillies continues to resonate throughout major league baseball. Both teams have now reported more positive tests within their organizations, and more games have been postponed, causing a ripple effect within the schedule. Meanwhile, the league is reportedly upgrading its protocols, has launched an investigation into the outbreak, and has reached an agreement with the Major League Baseball Players Association to reduce doubleheader games to seven innings apiece, just as the necessity for such twin bills appears to be increasing by the day as the postponements mount.
How necessary? On Friday morning, MLB Network’s Jon Heyman reported that the night’s game between the Cardinals and Brewers — neither of which team has crossed paths with the Marlins or Phillies — has been postponed as well due to multiple positive tests on the Cardinals. Sportsgrid’s Craig Mish followed up with a report that it’s two players infected. The team has been instructed to self-isolate. In other words, a new front in MLB’s battle to forge ahead has opened up.
Folks, it’s going great.
Since publishing my latest update on the subject on Wednesday morning, three additional Marlins players, all as yet unidentified, have tested positive, bringing the team’s total to 18 players and two coaches. The majority of those players are unidentified, but among those reported to be infected are catcher Jorge Alfaro, first baseman Garrett Cooper, shortstop Miguel Rojas, right fielder Harold Ramirez, and starters Sandy Alcantara and José Ureña. ESPN’s Jesse Rogers reports that the infected players and other personnel will be driven back to Miami on sleeper buses, while the rest will continue on their road trip.
As for the Phillies, none of their players has tested positive thus far, but a visiting clubhouse staffer did so over the weekend, and on Thursday, multiple outlets reported that one coach and a home clubhouse staffer both tested positive as well. In the wake of that news, the Phillies not only canceled workouts at Citizens Bank Park, but canceled all activity at the ballpark until further notice, and players have been told to isolate while they await more daily testing and results. Obviously, this is worrisome, not only because it could mean more infections on the way but because an outbreak crossing from one team to another is a nightmare scenario, even if it’s not specifically commissioner Rob Manfred’s nightmare scenario.
MLB had already postponed the Phillies’ home-and-home series against the Yankees this week, and has now postponed the team’s entire weekend series against the Blue Jays — a series it had already revisited twice since the schedule was originally announced, first to have the Phillies play as the visiting team because the Blue Jays’ temporary new home, Buffalo’s Sahlen Field, is still being upgraded to comply with the particulars of MLB’s 2020 standards, and then to move Friday’s game to part of a Saturday doubleheader, presumably to allow for one more day of testing.
Officially, the Phillies’ next scheduled game also happens to be the Marlins’ next scheduled game, since the latter’s weekday home-and-home series with the Orioles and weekend series with the Nationals were already canceled. On August 4, the two teams are supposed to play a three-game set in Miami. However, on Tuesday MLB said via a statement that additional rescheduling for the week of August 3rd would be announced later this week. MLB has already shown flexibility with regards to rescheduling games, and teams have shown a willingness to go along with the program; rather than let both the Yankees and Orioles idle in place while their opponents were shut down, MLB paired the teams for a two-game series in Baltimore — games that were originally scheduled to be played on August 3-4 — on Wednesday and Thursday. The opening of those dates, and the pending announcement of more rescheduling, may have to do with the Yankees and Phillies making up this week’s games, a possibility floated by the Washington Post’s Dave Shenin on Tuesday. Yankees manager Aaron Boone was working under that impression as well:
This sentence from Aaron Boone in many ways describes MLB this year: “I’m under the impression we are playing the Phillies next week.”
— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) July 29, 2020
Though they don’t extend to the active roster, the Phillies’ positive tests may force the postponement of their meeting with the Yankees even before it’s officially announced. Meanwhile, it may be the case that the Marlins remain on hiatus beyond Tuesday. All of which is to say that the schedule is still in flux. Good thing nobody needs to worry about tickets this year, right?
MLB postponements this week:
Phillies: 7 games
Marlins: 7 games
*Yankees: 4 games
*Orioles: 4 games
Blue Jays: 3 games
Nationals: 3 games
Cardinals: 1 game
Brewers: 1 game
(*Yankees and Orioles remained in action by playing two games vs. each other.)— Scott Lauber (@ScottLauber) July 31, 2020
Leaving aside the possibility of further rescheduling beyond Tuesday, the Marlins and Phillies will have both gone at least eight days without playing, all but eliminating the likelihood that they will make up every postponed game; the math says that even if the league were to reschedule both teams to play on Monday, August 3, each would have 56 days to play 57 games, and there’s no way that the players’ union will let that fly. While not official yet, it sounds as though the league is prepared to accept the possibility of teams playing differing totals of games, in which case playoff spots would be decided by winning percentages, as was the case in the strike-shortened 1972 and ’81 division races.
That said, the new rule for seven-inning games for doubleheaders appears to be MLB’s attempt to minimize that possibility. As with the man-on-second extra innings rule, MLB has once again taken a page from the minor leagues in a manner almost certain to enrage purists and invite ridicule; thankfully, both changes are in place only for 2020. The doubleheader rule is an attempt to protect pitchers, expedite games, minimize the time at the ballpark for players and staff, and allow for the possibility that postponements may create a frequent need to play two games in one day. Through Wednesday, the average game time this year was three hours and nine minutes. At that pace, a seven-inning game would be 42 minutes shorter; multiply it by two, and the savings approach an hour and a half.
While this doesn’t seem like he most urgent matter at the moment, Angels manager Joe Maddon told the Associated Press that he could see the potential utility with the new rule: “Right now, I don’t think it’s necessary based on how this season has been set up. If the doubleheaders were to pile up for whatever reason, I would have it like in a contingency plan.”
The Athletic’s Britt Ghiroli reported on Wednesday that the players’ union was surveying its members about the possibility either of playing two such games for a doubleheader or simply shortening the second game to seven innings. Concurrently, the league checked opinions on the matter among owners and general managers, and in marked contrast to so many other negotiations between the two sides lately, the decision came together very quickly, and will go into effect as of August 1. A doubleheader between the Indians and White Sox, played in order to make up a rainout from the day before, took place on Tuesday under standard nine-inning rules.
Off the field, MLB is updating its protocols in the wake of the Marlins’ mess, a possibility that commissioner Rob Manfred suggested in his interview with MLB Network on Monday. ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported that Manfred sent a memo to teams on Tuesday that includes mandates that players and staff wear surgical masks instead of cloth masks while traveling, and that each team travel with a compliance officer who will ensure that players and staff properly follow the league’s protocol. It’s unclear yet who will fulfill that role — a team executive or athletic trainer, or somebody from the league office — or how it differs from the previously created role of infection control prevention coordinator, a position described in MLB’s 2020 Operations Manual as an existing staff member “who will monitor and ensure compliance with MLB-mandated health and safety protocols.”
Regardless, it doesn’t sound like a lot of fun for the compliance officer, who would theoretically be charged with policing the spitting and high-fiving that has taken place despite the league’s directives, as well as working to ensure the wearing of masks and maintenance of social distancing. According to Passan, this person’s duties will include submitting reports, monitoring hotels, and arranging seating charts on buses to ensure the maintenance of social distancing rules, perhaps separating teammates likely to break them. The officer will be credentialed as Tier 1, as are players, managers, coaches and training staff; that status allows them access to restricted areas.
Manfred’s memo does not mandate a quarantine for teams that are on the road, but it does discourage players and staff from venturing outside hotels except to travel to games, and even from gathering in common areas of the hotel. Passan wrote that the protocols could be further strengthened in the coming days.
Back to the Marlins, the outbreak has fueled numerous rumors as to its origin, none of which have been substantiated. The New York Post’s Joel Sherman reported that the league has launched an investigation into the situation, not for punitive purposes but “with the aim of reinforcing better practices specifically with this team and learning what can be done to prevent a repeat elsewhere.” A league official told Sherman, “Something happened massively disruptive to the process that is not going on anywhere else.” More:
There is concentration currently on whether there were infected personnel on the Marlins’ charter last Tuesday from Miami to Atlanta, and whether protocol to avoid crowded public places while on the road was violated by members of the Marlins’ traveling party after a Tuesday night exhibition game against the Braves.
While MLB appears to be making an effort to understand how the outbreak happened, questions still linger as to how Sunday’s decision to play unfolded. “Nobody from Major League Baseball or the Marlins has publicly provided detailed answers about the behind-the-scenes decisions or protocols that led the league to determine it was safe to play Sunday, wrote The Athletic’s Meghan Montemurro and Jayson Stark. An epidemiologist working in professional sports (unidentified because he was not authorized by his employer to speak publicly) told The Athletic that the league’s protocols raise serious questions about how communications should be handled for similar situations, and that the decision to play can’t be left up to players, as it apparently was for the Marlins. “There has to be some medical intervention,” said the epidemiologist. “There has to be someone who can say, ‘This is what we have,’ and can say, ‘We need to stop it here.’” The epidemiologist suggested that if one or two teams needed to be shut down and quarantined for 10 to 14 days, then that should be the case for the entire sport, for the sake of safety and competitive integrity.
The league’s course of action regarding the Cardinals, who played the Twins on Tuesday and Wednesday, may indicate what kind of lessons have been learned from the Marlins-Phillies debacle. It counts as progress that Friday’s game was postponed before the team even reported to Miller Park. Then again, the speed with which MLB seems to want to move on may raise eyebrows:
Latest from MLB: pic.twitter.com/z7W8LO4diy
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) July 31, 2020
Presumably if additional positive tests arise, the rescheduled games will also be in jeopardy. Via the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Derrick Goold, “traditional” in this context means that the second game will start soon after the first one ends, as opposed to being a day-night doubleheader. The games are scheduled to be seven innings long, according to an official source. MLB officially announced the new rule on Friday afternoon.
This is a developing story, and it’s fair to wonder how different the outlook for continuing the 2020 season will look by the end of this coming weekend — or even the end of Friday. Suffice it to say that a league with 20% of its teams out of action on a given day due to the coronavirus probably isn’t sustainable.
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.
The worst flu season of the past decade years caused 61,000 deaths. COVID has already claimed more than twice that. Not to mention all of the people who don’t die who have long-term damage to their heart or lungs.
If I’m not mistaken, I believe that is the *estimated* deaths and not *confirmed* deaths. The number of estimated deaths is always higher than the number confirmed; when they do the estimation it’s going to dwarf anything we’ve seen in the US that is contagious in the last 100 years.
All that said, I think the latter part–the people who just don’t seem to get better–seems to be at least as relevant here. If we’ve got 500K-1M deaths, that is bad. But if you add in 5M-10M people who are disabled for a few months/years afterwards, that’s even worse.
Yeah, this is all seeming like a worse and worse idea. It’s yet to be seen how successful/sustainable the NBA’s and NHL’s respective bubble plans are, but it is clear already, only about a week in, that MLB’s plan was not and is not a good one (which also calls into serious questions the NFL’s insistence on a “normal” season as well). I know everyone here loves baseball, and I’ll admit to enjoying it even in the midst of everything Jay describes in the article, but I think we’ve already blown far past the point of acceptable player safety risk-entertainment reward tradeoff, and it’s gotta be time to shut it down, at least for a few weeks. Of course, as long as the owners are still on track to make their hundreds of millions for the year then I guess all other concerns are moot.
It is possible that a greater number of players would have contracted the virus if they were not playing and just hanging out at home. A large percentage had the virus when they showed up. Assuming they tested 1800 players and those with positives (X) contracted within the last 30 days, you would take (X)(7/30) to determine the minimum number of players who would have likely contracted back home in the last seven days. Of course there are a lot of other variables, i.e., were guys practicing together to get ready, are local numbers rising or declining, etc.. But its not like 0 players would have contracted the virus in the last week if they never started the season. I would imagine just based on how 20-30 year old males are behaving during this pandemic it is possible the number would be higher if they were still home.
Nonetheless, that is not exactly how workplace safety is calculated. OSHA could care less how many home owners fall off of their roofs.
So you are against all non-essential businesses being open I assume then? Because that’s the only way you can say the above and be logically consistent
I am against all non-essential businesses being open in such a way that needlessly endangers people (for instance restaurants being open at 100% capacity, or the company I work for insisting on keeping its office open against state orders when all employees are provided laptops and are more than capable of working from home). In MLB’s case, it seems like a bubble would have been a better solution. Or at least some plan beyond “meh, let’s just do everything we normally would… except no fans, that’ll fix it” and only half-enforcing whatever meager protocols they did come up with. I don’t mean to be an alarmist, but at this rate it’s only a matter of time until a player or team employee dies or develops serious health complications as a direct result of MLB continuing operations. And again, as much as we all like baseball, I’m not willing to literally sacrifice human beings in the name of some nice evening entertainment (and further fattening 30 or so already full-to-bursting wallets).
“I’m not willing to literally sacrifice human beings”
See, this is where I would beg to differ on this characterization. The math would indicate that the odds of a player dying from coronavirus this season (and let’s just assume that they got coronavirus *because* they were playing baseball in the first place) are next to nothing. To put this in perspective, Cirque Du Soleil has had two people die for our nice evening entertainment, should it have been shut down? The NFL has had a player die on the field, was one death for our entertainment too many? And the math would say that MLB will still finish behind them by the end of the season in ‘human sacrifices for our entertainment’!
And remember, we are not marching these people out at gunpoint and telling them to play baseball. By all means, they should be doing their best to prevent people from getting the disease, and the Marlins’ playing after positive results started coming out is inexcusable (though it is, in fact, partially the players’ fault that happened). But they are getting paid, they had input into and accepted the health protocols, and they can opt out.
The point I’m making is that society isn’t having an intelligent discussion on the coronavirus question. In every walk of life, we have reconciled ourselves with tradeoffs between risks and benefits, yet it’s apparently become distasteful to have that conversation about coronavirus. We’ve divided ourselves into “reopen and come what may!” and “no risk is small enough!”, which is why we can’t have, for example, a meaningful public discourse on reopening schools. There are no perfect answers, and we won’t even get to *good* answers unless we are frank with each other about exactly what risks are involved in an activity and what risks are involved by not allowing that activity. Instead, one feels like, if you bring up the notion that coronavirus needs to be talked about in terms tied to reality and supported by the numbers, there is instantly a crowd chanting “burn the heretic!”.
The risks to baseball players, and the public, of engaging in baseball during the outbreak are lower than (1) the risks of many other activities we happily are allowing during the pandemic and (2) the risks of many other activities we comfortably accept, pandemic or not. In that context,I just can’t get too worked up about baseball continuing.
I appreciate your nuanced opinion and think you have some valid points.
You raise a lot of good points and I’m afraid you’re correct about the two camps. Anymore I play “guess the narrative”- it usually happens in the first sentence or two. I also try to look deeper and read comments throughly beyond the narrative, but it is alarming how thought has become tribal.
I’d ask the bubble advocates to think back to their original reaction to the Arizona and Florida proposals, remember how the MLBPA reacted, then when the outbreaks shifted to Az and Fla. Some people have managed to get on three sides of this issue.
That MLB allowed Miami to play last Sunday was an incredibly stupid breech or lack of enforcement. But lets not forget the players have been incredibly irresponsible- which is said because they should have known better… Having three kids in college, I’m reminded young people view themselves as invincible, but these players have coaches who are much more at risk for serious COVID outcomes.
Despite what people may think risk isn’t shared equally over the population. Isolate older coaches, staff, and those with preexisting conditions. Play ball.
We never quit working and I live in the Chicago metropolitan area.
You join Cirque knowing the risks that come from falling off the trapeze, or whatever.
Comparing that to a wickedly contagious virus is intensely illogical.
That’s a whole pile of bad takes.
First, Cirque du Soleil was shut down each time after there was a death in both 2013 and 2018. This happened even though failed acrobatic moves are not contagious! Find a better comparison.
Second, death is not the only negative outcome from Covid-19. Cardiomyopathy, like that now experienced by Eduardo Rodriguez, is a common effect, even among young adults. Long-term heart damage won’t show up until he’s maybe in his 50s. For other young and healthy people, mini-strokes, blood clots and permanent lung scars have occurred.
Third, the deaths could include the housecleaner at the hotel, the server handing them takeout, or their parents who live in the same household because they can’t afford to live in separate homes. These people have to work to survive.
Society can’t stop everything but travelling groups of 60 people who spend a lot of time in close proximity damn well better take all precautions.
Do you have data on other negative outcomes? Else, it’s just anecdotes. On cases in CA, here’s how many result in deaths by age:
<=17: ~45,600 cases, 0 deaths, 0%
18-34: 177,177 cases, 132 deaths, 0.0745%
35-49: 125,562 cases, 517 deaths, 0.4%
50-59: 70,453 cases, 901 deaths, 1.3%
60-64: 25,439 cases, 693 deaths, 2.8%
65-69: 17,603 cases, 884 deaths, 5%
If CA's results are similar for the rest of the nation, schools should open, obese teachers above 49 should probably opt out and obese ones above 35 should think about it, and MLB players don't have much to worry about.
https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/COVID-19/COVID-19-Cases-by-Age-Group.aspx
Should we salute the Marlins Players for putting themselves at risk to support the Strip Club industry or what?
Most non-essential businesses don’t make billions of dollars, such that they have the operating revenue such that they can be operated in a way that might be safer than having the majority of their workers at home. So it easy to be logically consistent.
That said, MLB is not operating in a manner to keep players safe. Players are not social distancing or wearing masks while on camera. I expect it is much worse when cameras aren’t there. I thought teams would enforce precaution as I expected MLB was going to make teams play with their reserve rosters if they got infected…but then, some teams just don’t have the incentive to win.
The other day I finally got a chance to catch my first game, and the UMPIRE was walking right up to people without a mask. It was just sitting there around his neck. Fortunately everyone else wore it when they approached someone who wasn’t part of their team but seriously, way to set an example.
This part I agree with – if MLB is going to be operating, it needs to be taking reasonable precautions, and there certainly seem to have been balls dropped on that front.
So operating under the assumption that the season will probably be called off this weekend, here are some all-time single-season records that were set in the 2020 season (qualified players only):
Batting Average: Miguel Rojas, .700
On-Base Percentage: Miguel Rojas, .750
Slugging Percentage: Miguel Rojas, 1.300
OPS: Miguel Rojas, 2.050
BB%: Rhys Hoskins, 46.7%
K%: Gary Sanchez, 62.5%
In the last 100 years, there have been 9 player season by 6 individual players who qualified for the batting title with a batting average above .400 (George Sisler, 1920; George Sisler, 1922; Ty Cobb, 1922; Rogers Hornsby, 1922; Harry Heilmann, 1923; Rogers Hornsby, 1924; Rogers Hornsby, 1925; Bill Terry, 1930; and Ted Williams, 1941). In 2020, there are 12 such players (Miguel Rojas; Giancarlo Stanton; Jose Iglesias; Kyle Lewis; Jose Ramirez; Michael Brantley; Mike Yastrzemski; DJ LeMahieu; JaCoby Jones; Carlos Correa; Hanser Albert; and Jackie Bradley, Jr.).
On the pitching side, among the all-time single season records set this year were:
ERA: Shane Bieber, Zach Plesac, Lance Lynn, and Kyle Gibson tied with 0.00
K/9: Trevor Bauer, 18.47
BB/9: Zach Plesac, Jack Flaherty, Alex Cobb, and Mike Clevinger, 0.00
WHIP: Zach Plesac, 0.38
Take a bow, gentlemen, you’ve put up some of the greatest seasons of all time, and you should feel proud to have your names in the record books.
Honestly don’t think they’ll cancel. This is MLB we’re talking about. Manfred is a willing mouthpiece/whipping boy for the decisions of the owners. I want to know which owners want this to keep going, and why.
I just assume it’s most or all of them, and the why is simple: they value their bank accounts more than they value other people’s lives. (It’s really hard to get rich, and stay rich, in America if you’re not at least a little bit of a sociopath.)
Unfortunately, the answer is probably “most of them” and the reason “money”. As long as they get to the playoffs and get the related tv money I’m honestly not sure what will stop this thing. *Probably* the death of a player, but short of that I really don’t know… Maybe a player strike/mass opting-out?
Some largish minority of owners didn’t want to have a season at all. But they all want a postseason, because the way the contracts are structured that’s more profitable to them than the regular season. Which is almost certainly a significant part of the answer to “why will there be so many teams in the postseason this year?” — assuming we have a postseason. Which we probably will, and for that reason, even if a lot of the teams end up playing less than 60 games because they can’t make up all the games that are and will continue to be postponed.
They’ll go through the weekend. If we knew it wouldn’t get worse, these disruptions are no big deal. However, two isolated outbreaks in the first week and a half? There’s going to be more. At some point there will be too many teams sitting for there to be games. That’s when they’ll throw in the towel.
They’ll stagger into August. Then they just take the results of those 20 odd games, remove the teams that are too quarantined to play, and go directly into an expanded playoff. Because that’s where the money leads them.
How about Shane Bieber with a 27.00 K/W ratio and a -0.35 FIP?
I know someone explained it before, but how does a negative fip work again? The league owes him runs or something?
It’s because of how FIP is scaled to match ERA.
Alternatively, it’s because there is a floor effect that is censoring ERA, while FIP has no such problems.
Of course, by saying this I’m also endorsing the “my model isn’t wrong, it’s reality that is wrong!” school of thought and that doesn’t seem like a road I want to travel on.
I know there’s a legitimate answer, as others have mentioned, but I love the idea that the league owes Bieber something. The next time he gives up a run, I want to see him “call in his favor” and wipe it off the scoreboard.
It would be an interesting “Effectively Wild” style hypothetical to imagine an alternate version of the game where teams can bank runs, and players can bank outcomes, which they can then use at other times in other games. (Can you only deploy the banked value against the same opponent in a later game? Or against any opponent? What if you have to declare the outcome is being “banked” in the inning in which it happens — no waiting for the end of a blowout to see how much you can set aside: you have to pick the fruit as it comes, leaving yourself open to a comeback by the other team; a pitcher who banks a K has to face another batter, etc).
1 extra base, for a total of 5, is added to the diamond (pentagon).
It’ll never fly.
Too militaristic. 😉
Craig Kimbrel has had a negative FIP in 201 different appearances over his career. (He’s even had 4 of them since joining the Cubs!)
Indeed! At the end of every season, starters get to apply for an earned run refund resulting from inherited runners scoring!
Shane Bieber, run loan shark. “It’d be a shame if something happened to your cleanup hitter….”
They aren’t cancelling the season. What they are going to be doing, I think, is reconciling themselves with the fact that there will be an uneven number of games played, teams will be sitting out for a week+ at a time, and that this baseball season is essentially going to be an meaningless set of exhibition games to warm up for the expanded playoffs.
Fun Fact: Mike Yastrzemski currently has the highest career wRC+ (131) of any major leaguer named Yastrzemski.
Damn, I just posted a shorter version of the same thing. Pardon the redundancy when you see it down below.
As sad as this post is, this also super uplifted me today lol
Hi as somebody who lives in New York and got used to the constant sounds of sirens for two straight months and whose uncle died of a heart attack because there were no ambulances to take him to the hospital when he called 911 because they were all full of COVID patients, please stop talking.
Also, I’m sorry.
Why do you omit the obvious problem of virus spread that has already led to 150,000 U.S. deaths?
Read that number again, if you have the courage to.
We’re all 150K deaths actually caused by COVID?
I am not claiming they weren’t. But that # gets reported as though there were no other factors.
If a person with a COVID diagnosis dies of a heart attack, was it a COVID fatality?
What % of the 150K would have died anyway?
Has the overall death-rate in America actually increased?
Some estimates think the numbers are actually higher than reported. However, let’s say you’re right, and we are overestimating COVID deaths. Let’s say all of the intelligent people studying this virus are total buffoons and are misrepresenting the numbers by a staggering 50%. That’s still 75,000 deaths, and the number of cases/deaths continues to trend up.
We’re at the point where the exact number no longer matters — we’re in catastrophic levels of death, whether the estimate is over or under a few thousand deaths.
Per the CDC (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm) we’re running about 9% excess deaths for the year. That’s consistent with 150,000 or so covid-19 deaths. OTOH, the CDC data sheet I got that number form lists only 137,922 covid-19 involved deaths (but does not include this week and they often have changes upward to the last few weeks later), and that does include cases where Covid-19 was only one of several involved factors.
I suspect that the lockdown itself is killing some people (a lot of “elective” medical treatments that were delayed are in fact very important, chemotherapy was considered elective locally), but Covid-19 is clearly killing a lot of people.
This looks to be the worst flu-like ailment since at least 1968.
1) With the heart attack, it will depend on what the doctor wrote on the death certificate, and I don’t know what the doctors would do. But there might also be some people who died of COVID-19 without a positive test, and won’t be included in the total number – so it could be a bit lower than 150,000 – or it could be more. Also, you need to think about excess deaths – as Pepper Martin sadly tells us, if the health system is overwhelmed then people will die of non-COVID who otherwise could have potentially survived. In the UK, we have among the most excess deaths out of any country in Europe. Also where people died changed – there was a slight drop in hospital deaths, but an increase in home deaths – as people stayed away from hospitals.
2) Some would have died without COVID-19, but the vast majority would still be alive today without it.
3) Again, can only speak about the UK, but in the UK it increased substantially. Although, in the UK we had some weeks in June where the weekly death rate was below the 5 year average – but overall for the year we have had many tens of thousands of people who have died who wouldn’t have, pre pandemic.
The problem is that if you ask “what % would have died anyway” then suddenly most diseases don’t look so bad. They always hurt the sick or elderly disproportionately. It excludes contagious disease entirely as a social problem, and limits social concerns to things like guns and cars and workplace accidents.
The only way to downplay this is to basically say: Infectious disease shouldn’t be a concern. And I do not think people will like the consequences of that.
Also, important to note, it’s ~150K deaths WITH at least some measures nationwide to distance/mitigate etc. The “we should just accept this” position means accepting MANY MANY more deaths, in addition to more hospitalizations, illnesses etc.
But sure, enjoy going back to the bar and feeling brave.
Eduardo Rodriguez (an otherwise healthy, low-risk individual) has developed a heart condition as a result of covid – it’s yet to be seen what kind of reaction the scores of more recently infected players will have. Where’s the line? Are you okay if someone’s career ends because of the virus? If a player dies? If a player’s family member dies? Any of those seems like a steep price to pay just to bring you and me a bit of a diversion for a few months. Beyond baseball, please spend some time educating yourself, doing at least some cursory research, and really examining your beliefs about this virus. It is extremely dangerous and there’s no way to know for sure how an individual will respond to infection. And still, the thing is, if everyone would recognize that and do their part, we could shield everyone from the most serious consequences. Instead, misconceptions or outright lies like those you just typed are spreading at alarming rates and directly leading to people dying. Sorry to get preachy, but just… Please think before you speak/write/post.
Are you refusing to watch the games?
If you are watching, aren’t you part of the reason players are exposing themselves to the virus?
I have been watching the games, yes. I had initial optimism that perhaps MLB would take things seriously enough to make this work. Medical experts seem to agree that it is possible to make something like this work, given proper precautions and protocols are put into place (and enforced). Maybe it’s actually not possible, or maybe the complete disregard MLB seems to have for the safety of its employees is to blame, but either way it is now clear that the season can’t go on like this. And my enthusiasm for watching baseball has decreased noticeably to the point that it feels gross to be watching and caring about the outcome of games. This all sucks. My point is only that the answer to the problem is not to pretend that it isn’t happening or (maybe worse) acknowledge that it is happening and say whatever, it’s fine if people die from it as long as I can see my team play!
So little info about this on MLB.com right now.
Business as usual, move along, nothing to see here…
that has been interesting. MLB.com has yet to break any of these types of stories and only reports on them a few hours after every other sports website.
A Diamondbacks scout, age 40, has died from this.
At a certain point the sheer number of cancelations they’re forced to have every night will render the competitive integrity of the season a farce. It seems like they’re content to have however many people get sick at this point , but even from just a cold and unfeeling baseball perspective, all these postponements seem unmanageable.
I think MLB is mortified by what is happening, but doesn’t have the cajones to cancel the season, so is letting mother nature make the decision for them. Malice by inaction.
This…this isn’t going to work. Is it?
If some people have to die, that’s just a risk owners are willing to take in order to get some of that sweet playoff TV money…
I don’t know the numbers but a *lot* of people were injured — some severely, some kids (did anyone die? feels about 50/50)– before they were willing to string up a net.
As a response to both of you:
This is actually an illuminating example of how as a society we actually accept a great deal of individual human pain and suffering as the cost of doing business. For example, we know some people will drive drunk and kill people, we know some people will just randomly get in collisions and die, yet we as a society have decided that those deaths, effectively, are ‘worth’ people having personal transportation. Those deaths have become accepted as part of the background noise of life, sad but true (one is reminded of the excellent Joker monologue about “It all being part of the plan”). It’s rough to think about, but on a macro level we are *constantly*, but not consciously, weighing the risk to people’s lives against freedoms, the public good and economic activity. So to act shocked about people doing it here is a bit disingenuous. The *real* question is: what are the odds of the risk, how bad are the consequences of the risk, and how big is the downside to taking actions to avoid the risk entirely. This is, in fact, the reasonableness standard upon which our entire legal system is built.
I know it’s not fashionable on this site to talk about coronavirus as if it’s not the black death, but if you’re going to make statements about people dying, you need to inform yourself about the risk profile for the demographics in MLB. After all, understanding the nature of the risks involved is decision making 101, right? I will give you a hint, it’s not nothing, but you’d need a magnifying glass to tell the difference between it and nothing. There are those who will say almost nothing is too much, too each their own I guess, but take a look around you, that’s not how our society talks about quite literally everything except coronavirus.
So what you see as owners willing to let people die for the playoff money, I see as players voluntarily engaging in an activity that has very little risk to them personally, and for which they are paid handsomely.
The problem is that it is not just the players who could get infected. Umpires, coaches, non playing staff and, dare I say it, owners themselves (some are quite old) who are of much greater risk of complications or death.
It isn’t just about the the people playing the game. People tend to forget that.
Agreed, MLB has the money to ensure that employees who are in a higher risk profile can stay home and still get paid, and they need to do it. But if Don Mattingly wants to be in the dugout with his guys, I’m not going to tell him he can’t be.
Well, you can, but it won’t mean anything because you’re not Don Mattingly’s boss.
Well said.
“So what you see as owners willing to let people die for the playoff money, I see as players voluntarily engaging in an activity that has very little risk to them personally, and for which they are paid handsomely.”
Exactly… well said.
The risk is low for healthy MLB players with no underlying conditions, but its not zero and its not equivalent to catching the flu (although the flu sucks and kills thousands every year). As I posted above, it is unfortunate they don’t realize wearing mouth and nose covering reduces viral shedding if you have contracted the virus. I know you agree, but I’m amazed at how many are unwilling to state this.
Unless I’m overlooking the invisible guns that are pointed at the players heads it seems to be a risk that the players are also willing to take at this point.
Of course not. The plan relied on there not being widespread community transmission. There is widespread community transmission. The players are in the communities and not in a bubble. This is the reality of the season–as cases go up in a metro area, the team that is based in that area will see more positive tests. If you’re going to suspend games for any positive test, and more with more positive tests, you’re not going to get many games.
Sean Doolittle said it: “Sports are like the reward of a functioning society.”
The protocols within MLB matter, but without a hard bubble, the level of circulation in the community matters more. Want sports? Take adequate steps to drive down cases by 10x or 100x.
(Same frustration with the crummy school debate framed as one-dimensional education versus safety. No point along the current tradeoff is any good.)
Right, the tradeoff is that you keep all non-essential businesses closed and require masks so you can open schools. But it became obvious pretty quickly we were not going down that road.
I still maintain it could have worked without a bubble. The players could have maintained a limited amount of contact and kept the risks low. But, more and more it looks like this was an unrealistic expectation. I mean, the Marlin’s players went to strip club in Atlanta? That’s about as far as you can get from being careful. MLB’s protocols haven’t helped much, but even the strictest protocols won’t keep players safe if they have this little care.
To be fair, the big problem was likely that they live in Miami. I think you may be right, but if so, it definitely can’t work with community transmission rates like this.
I still maintain that they should have just pitched the Canadian government on doing it all in Canada, or just done it all in Utah.
Is it a fact that Marlins players went to a strip club in Atlanta?
No. There’s zero proof this happened, just one irresponsible journalist’s speculation.
https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/mlb-investigation-finds-marlins-players-failed-to-follow-coronavirus-protocols-on-atlanta-trip-per-report/
The only “evidence” so far of the Marlins going to a strip club is Bob Nightengale wildly speculating by saying “I believe” and “I think.” That’s not evidence, it’s poor journalism.
You just don’t get it. This isn’t about the health of the individual players. It’s about preventing mass exposure to groups of people that has the potential to overwhelm the hospital systems if left unchecked. Even if only a handful of players end up requiring emergency care, it’s a handful of hospital beds that could have been empty had players not congregated in a sporting event. When the season ends up canceled, precious resources will be needed to contact-trace 1800 players because they had direct contact with people confirmed to have contracted this highly-contagious disease. My wife works at a hospital and was exposed to the reality that doctors had to choose which people to save and which they would allow to die because ventilators and other emergency equipment had to be rationed. I’ll give you a hint: the 30 year old athlete is going to receive the most attentive emergency care over the 70 year old who still might have 20 years left to live. How is this country supposed to take COVID-19 seriously at the local levels if professional sports leagues act like they are exempt?
Why the F is the average game taking over 3 hours to play?
Have you not seen a baseball game this century?
Of course. I know this has been an obvious problem for many, many years. I can’t believe the average game is taking over 3 hours THIS year.
I don’t see why the average game time would have decreased massively so far. Okay, the extra innings rule will shorten extra innings games, and the three batter rule will have some effect – but these are only effecting a minority of games. If anything, I think the game time should have increased because there will be far more pitcher changes due to pitchers not being fully stretched out – for example, the Dodgers in their 7 games have had two games where their SP pitched in the sixth inning.
I blame the Red Sox and Yankees, but, then again, I blame them for everything bad. I’m pretty sure Aaron Judge ate a bat in Wuhan last January.
For just half a second, I was picturing Aaron Judge biting off the end of a baseball bat.
Didn’t seem particularly ludicrous.
I’ve scrolled by this enough times, but you do realize that it wasn’t because someone ate a bat, right? It’s possible that bats have had this coronavirus for a while. But it mutated enough to jump to another animal, which then mutated enough to jump to humans.
I’m watching the Yankees-Red Sox game and I wondered why they were singing God Bless America during a needless 7th inning stretch. (On a related note, when can we be free of the tyranny of that song? I was all for it after baseball resumed after Sept.11 2001 but it’s overstayed it’s welcome by about 18 years.)
“the infected players and other personnel will be driven back to Miami on sleeper buses”
Pretty immoral to put bus drivers’ lives at risk just because the Marlins want to go back home. How can Derek Jeter or MLB possibly justify this?
They should allow the bus drivers to opt out
Jeter’s people will send the bus drivers gift baskets.
“The epidemiologist suggested that if one or two teams needed to be shut down and quarantined for 10 to 14 days, then that should be the case for the entire sport, for the sake of safety and competitive integrity.”
I get it, we aren’t epidemiologists so we shouldn’t comment on the disease, but now they also get to voice their concerns on competitive integrity?
Well, s/he “works in professional sports”, so it is presumably literally their job to take into account and form an opinion on both of those things!
I think you are being sarcastic. Right?
No, actually… Why else would an epidemiologist be specifically employed in professional sports if not to weigh the health and safety risks against things like competitive integrity? Otherwise they’d just ask someone at the CDC or WHO or something (which would probably be the better way to go honestly, as their answer would likely be that trying to continue on with this at all is insanely reckless after what we’ve seen after just the first week)!
Disagree. If I was heavily invested in Amazon I wouldn’t want their shareholder decisions being made by a delivery driver.
You are so close to an epiphany
I just have this suspicion that the league is going to force this season to finish. Teams will play 20 games and other teams will play 50+ before they consider canceling it.
At this rate, the Marlins will win the NL East with their .667 winning percentage.
I don’t really understand how herd immunity works, but isn’t it 55%?
And if they do play the series against the Phillies next week, can you imagine the Marlins winning a second consecutive series from the Phillies with a bunch of AAA and prospects?
Previously, I predicted that 15-20 teams would have their seasons suspended at some point, because I thought the threshold was multiple players testing positive. But if a single positive test is enough to have a suspended season then it’s going to happen to all (or very close to all) 30 teams (I still think we’ll get 15-20 suspended for 7 days like the Phillies and Marlins, though).
What the MLB (and a lot of people outside of MLB) don’t seem to understand is that if the players and staff aren’t in bubbles there is really no easy way to keep them from getting COVID-19–it relies on there not being widespread community transmission. And aside from a couple of states in the northeast, every team is located in a city where there is widespread community transmission. You wouldn’t see it immediately but as things get worse in a lot of metro areas you will see that reflected in the positive tests for the team as well.
I find it bizarre that the teams are not in a bubble – this is what they are doing in Formula 1, where they are currently getting ready to race in their third different country. In cricket, the West Indies played 3 test matches against England, all while in a bubble – even the commentators were not allowed to leave the ground (they chose the two grounds because they have a hotel on site, so could host the entire match) – which was discussed on air. One of the players was fined for going home between games – he then had to self isolate in a hotel room for 5 days (even though he had no symptoms/met anyone with a positive test).
I think if the baseball players want a season, they do need to accept living in a bubble with very stringent rules – otherwise outbreaks will happen.
Same with the PGA Tour. I think this is week 8. They had 6 positives from week 2 to week 5, but, none since. Tournaments have gone on pretty much without incident.
Maybe the only hope is that these outbreaks scare the players into realizing that even if MLB isn’t in a bubble, they need to act like they’re in a bubble.
Yeah, MLB’s plan was never a good one and its become blatantly clear just how terrible it is/was when compared to the other sports.
If the NFL forges ahead with a similar, non bubble plan (which is what they are saying publicly) it should damn near be worthy of a lawsuit from the players. Its just criminally stupid at this point.
Part of the problem was the players didn’t want to live in a bubble. Which is too bad because things would have been a lot simpler if they had just played all the games in New York State.
That would have worked.
For a league with 8 teams.
Idk if F1 has just gotten insanely lucky or what. They just had their first positive test, and a driver will miss at least this weekend’s race, but the drivers and teams have all been travelling across Europe between races and none (until now) have gotten it.
Europe doesn’t have community transmission at nearly the rate America does. That’s the difference. For the most part, the citizens of Europe listened to the science, not idiots proclaiming their rights, or conspiracy theorists, or orange monsters.
It wasn’t even the guys partying in Monaco on the off week.
It also probably has something to do with the fact that teams and drivers have essentially no lives during the season. It’s not unlike wrestling where you’re basically cutting all season, which makes you ornery and anti social at the best of times.
Its not luck. Its actual competence and enforcement.
Literally everyone in F1 wears a mask. You will not see a single person in any teams garage at anytime not wearing a mask for the whole weekend and all of them are socially distancing. Even during pre race interviews you will see the driver standing 6 feet from the interviewer and both are wearing masks. Meanwhile in MLB you have half the team (or more) not wearing a mask. High fiving, hugging, (reportedly going to strip clubs) etc etc
Watch an F1 race then watch a baseball game. Its night and day. That is why F1 has had almost no issues and MLB has been a disaster.
I go back and forth on this–is a bubble feasible? will the players revolt? could they get by just by all being in a low-COVID area?–and I keep coming back to the idea that whether or not a bubble is necessary, that whatever assumptions they made about community transmission in July were wrong, they were wrong about the implications of community transmission, or both.
At the minimum, the idea that they would be in 27 different metro areas kind of dooms it to this kind of an outcome. You just cannot protect against COVID rates in 27 different metro areas. You kind of have to pick a place and hope it’s a low-transmission environment as a prerequisite, no matter what else you do.
Bubble seems to be working in Orlando for the NBA, right?
Baseball is by some distance the least centralized sport in the US. Good in some ways, bad in ways that get people to cooperate and agree on central action
Three bubbles by region. West, L.A./ San Diego. Midwest, Chicago/ Milwaukee. East, N.Y./ Philadelphia. Suspend season for 10 days and restart in those three regions
Logistics. They can’t be in a bubble if they travel.
I think your assumption is that would be enough to get the season canceled. They are going to cancel plenty of games, that is a given. I truly believe that some teams could play 50+ games, while others play 20 games. It is clear the MLB doesn’t care about cheapening of the product, so at least to me, that doesn’t seem like a barrier to the league.
Once upon a time (a full 10-15 days ago!), I thought that once community spread got everywhere and they were suspending games left and right, that MLB would see that this whole idea was futile and embarrassing and they wouldn’t finish the season. Now I’m not so sure.
I think that you’re still sure, but you now expect the opposite outcome.
I’m still sure that more players are going to get infected and more games are going to get canceled/seasons suspended. But now I’m unsure what MLB’s reaction is going to be.
“Some teams could play 50+ games, while others play 20 games.” Totally agree it could happen this year.
Which could make the 2020 season standings look a lot like the 1872 National Association:
Team…………………….. W L GB
Boston…………………..39 8 —-
Philadelphia…………..30 14 7.5
Baltimore………………35 19 7.5
New York………………34 20 8.5
Troy……………………….15 10 13
Wash. Olympics……….2 7 18
Cleveland………………..6 16 20.5
Wash. Nats………………0 11 21
Middletown……………..5 19 22.5
Brooklyn Atl…………….9 28 25
Brooklyn Eck……………3 26 27
You also need the umpires in the bubbles.
And you need the groundskeepers in the bubbles, unless you have strictly enforced protocols that prevent the groundskeepers from coming into contact with or sharing space with the players, staff, and umpires (which is infeasible if the grounds crew has to ever speak to the umpires about things like field conditions and playability).
The camera operators who are in positions distant from the field (like the centerfield cameras and the cameras in the second or third tiers of the stadium) probably don’t need to be in the bubbles, if you can enforce protocols to keep them outside of spaces where players and others are, but the camera operators in the pits next to the dugout, any on-field cameras, and the broadcast tech crew that’s going to be all over the stadium needs to be in the bubble. Announcers could work remotely (the elimination of the on-field interview would be a silver lining…).
And then, you need all the people who provide the normal living services to the people in the bubbles – all the people doing the cooking, cleaning, laundry, and everything else that 1000+ people in the bubble need to function for three months – to be themselves in the bubble, or else you’re risking community spread from them.
I don’t know if it was ever feasible.
To be fair, you literally cannot put everyone in a bubble unless you’ve got farmers and cooks in the bubble too. But even a partial bubble should have some very large advantages.
Yet the NBA and NHL (a sport that widely spans two countries) both figured this all out…..
Didn’t the NBA just start up 1-2 days ago? It’s absurd to think they’ve already figured this all out. If one team pulls a Marlins and goes to a strip club, it can spread to every other team pretty quickly.
The season just started but the NBA has been in the bubble and holding exhibition games for well over a week and has had practices for almost a month. They have not had a positive test for 2+ weeks and counting.
MLB couldnt even go 1 game without a positive and withing a week had a full blown outbreak.
Its pretty objectively clear that the NBA’s plan is MILES better than MLB’s (which should surprise no one).
The decisions the league has made is so obnoxious at this point. Rather than mandating masks on the field, they shorten games when half the country is unemployed. For the life of me I do not understand how the league can be so stupid. With that said, the owners pockets matter much more than the players to the league, so I cannot foresee any substantial changes. Teams will miss games, some more than others.
They don’t have to shut it down quite yet, they can still juggle, but the games are going to seem more and more like exhibitions, because standings in order to determine playoff spots are going to lack some legitimacy, particularly if games cannot be made up.
The health of the players obviously needs to take precedence. I get it that most who test positive are either asymptomatic or have mild symptoms, but not all, and certainly not all people that positive players might come into contact with.
A lot of what this comes down to is trying come up with a revised model that accepts that some people will be positive, and few will get ill, but that’s the price of playing the games. Is that OK with the players and the teams? It’s a very hard question to answer, especially since they’ve already discussed this once, come to a conclusion based on a set of assumptions, and very rapidly, found those assumptions to be incorrect.
Honest question: Did the MLBPA mandate that players be tested every other day as part of the agreement? It’s not like employers across the country are testing their workers every day before they show up to work. Hospital worker protocals in my area are if you come in contact with someone with Covid, you simply monitor your symptoms. You don’t take time off work and you don’t self isolate. Obviously that’s part of the reason we’ve seen record number of cases recently, but I’m curious as to why the MLB thinks it’s necessary to test every single player constantly as opposed to holding people out when they get symptoms. NASCAR isn’t testing drivers/crewmembers/mechanics/personnel before each race and they seem to be doing fine.
I think it mostly comes down to the fact that playing a competitive game requires the coming together of two completely separate organizations. Most workplaces don’t travel around the country to put their employees in close physical proximity with some other workplaces’s employees for 3 days before moving on to another one. Even NASCAR is essentially 40-odd independently operating entities that don’t really ever have a reason to come into contact with another of those entities. As we’ve seen already from Marlins -> Phillies the potential for spreading the virus literally across the country is way higher for someone in MLB than just about any other workplace. Theoretically, frequent testing can help prevent that from happening (though not if a team independently decides to play a game after already learning of multiple positive tests… *cough* Mattingly & co. *cough*).
Also, we STILL have a test shortage in this country so it is not feasible for most people to get tested so often. Being a multi-billion dollar industry allows MLB to do the otherwise infeasible in this case.
I am surprised that we have a testing shortage. I can literally get a test in an hour whenever I want to. I have to pay for it, but it is remarkably easy.
This is true in some areas, but for example where I live you’d need a referral from a doctor/medical professional to get one – in some places even that wouldn’t guarantee that the local facilities have the capacity to give one.
Makes sense. We have rapid testing areas everywhere. Usually you are supposed to do a virtual visit first, but they will usually take you if you show up. Then you just go through something that resembles a drive thru.
There are some pretty strong regional differences. If you live in the northeast right now it’s easy to get a test. If you live in the sunbelt, you might have to wait most of the day in line for one. This is due both to the number of people with COVID in different regions and to the testing infrastructure that’s been set up.
Even in the Northeast, it could take 10-14 days for you to get the results from your test, because the labs that process the tests are overcapacity. Which makes the tests essentially useless for preventative isolation.
See that is weird, I get my results in 15 minutes in Oregon usually
Am I missing something regarding Marlins spreading it to the Phillies? From my understanding two people that work for the team got it. Why would you just assume it came from the Marlins?
Occam’s Razor.
Given that one of the positive tests on the Phillies was a visiting clubhouse attendant, and that there were multiple people in the visiting clubhouse over three days who later tested positive, it’s not unreasonable to conclude at this point that that was the most likely transmission path.
Ahh, if it is a visiting clubhouse attendant that certainly makes sense
MJD – the reason why testing is mandated so frequently (and every other day is not enough) is because people are capable of spreading the virus when they are asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic. Waiting for signs of illness guarantees you will miss infections and allow for the spread of Covid. I mean…. just look at what’s happening in the country right now.
It seems that even with the Marlins outbreak, more people tested positive at intake than during the season, meaning more MLB players and staffers got sick before starting work with their respective clubs than during work.
If the season weren’t happening, players would be training and working out at private facilities with a wider range of people, and not getting tested every other day. They’d be going to grocery stores/restaurants instead of having meals provided to them by the team. The more oblivious among them would be going out socializing or partying, instead of preparing to play games.
Do we know what the infection rate would be for that counter-factual? No, that’s not how counter-factuals work. But maybe that’s a question people should be asking before rushing to judgment.
And yes, other people are involved with the putting on of a major-league season. Just like baseball players and owners want to make money, so do those other people. If a flight attendant/bus driver/hotel staffer isn’t serving MLB teams, they’ll be serving plenty of other people going about their lives who aren’t getting tested every other day. Sure, I’d love if Marriott allowed staffers to opt-out. However, there are also a lot of service-industry people out of work that would love to have those jobs.
I understand the realities of how long it takes to get test results back but I just don’t see how any team is going to avoid some type of outbreak this season. The positive Cardinals tests were from Wednesday. So that means:
1) two players that were positive on Wednesday were with the team for Wednesday’s loss against the Twins
2) Cleveland used the same locker room and dugout on Thursday that apparently had two infected players in it on Wednesday
3) The Twins have now played two games in a row against a team that definitely had at least two infected players on it and a team that might have been exposed to COVID since they were in the same place
Doesn’t that mean that Cleveland and Minnesota should test their teams today and postpone their games at least until the results come back?
Regarding 2), knowing what we know about COVID, using the same space a day apart shouldn’t be an issue assuming reasonable precautions were taken.
Knowing what we know about MLB, I don’t feel too comfortable about that assumption, though.
Surface transmission is very low probability, but not impossible. If they cleaned the locker rooms/dugouts/bullpens/etc, they shouldn’t have a problem. Proximity to stadium staff is a more likely vector if they are going to get it at the stadium.
I said this back in April and got mostly downvoted but I guess I will say it again.
If you have to have a season that really bears no resemblance to an actual season, maybe the best plan is to just not play baseball this year.
Maybe from your perspective, but a lot of others would disagree:
Owners want to get anything they can for revenue
Players want to get paid and, you know, play baseball
Rest of the staff wants to keep their jobs, many of who can’t just ‘not work’ for a year
Lots and lots of fans would rather get sorta-whacky baseball than zero baseball (me included)
Do i love the expanded playoffs, new rules, empty stadiums, and uneven scheduling? No. But when watching the games it’s still fundamentally baseball with almost all the same players I know and love. To be honest, during the games, it feels 95% the same to me.
@Shirtless and @Runaway – upvoted both of you. Both perspectives are completely valid….I go back and forth between them daily. Such are the times we are in, with so many unknowns regarding this pandemic.
I don’t think a perspective saying “If I can’t enjoy it, then no one can enjoy it” is valid
It wouldn’t be valid. Which is why i didnt say that.
Imagine if an airline said “ok, we can fly you from New York to LA, but you have to make 9 stops in 9 different cities, it will take you 48 hours, you have to walk the last 10 miles and there is a 5% chance you might die”.
If you have to make a ridiculous amount of concessions, at some point its just not worth it anymore. If MLB has to make it so that its not even the same rules anymore (which they have done), there is a logical argument that maybe its just not even worth it. No matter how much we might want to watch it/play it.
Right with you Runaway. This is peoples careers we are talking about. Plenty of people cannot afford to miss an entire year. You’d have AAA guys working during the offseason and not improving. The owners have enough money that they can survive this certainly. Most players are not millionaires, especially now with how much teams love guys on minimum contracts. Also this is their entire career! A lot of people do not have any other career plans, and/or are supporting their entire family/extended families in other countries or here stateside. Plus, how can your reasonably say you’d rather have no baseball than baseball? It wasn’t like they were ever going to cancel the season anyhow (prior).
Ernie “Covid14” Banks: “Let’s play 1.55555555556.”
Sometimes I get tired of being right all the time.
You could try switch hitting then, like Ji-Man Choi
One thing’s for certain; the union’s proposals for the number of games played have proved to be completely impractical.
They can kiss goodbye to a grevience as a result.
The grievance will be decided based on the facts available at the time. That said, I suspect it has an uphill battle all the same. But so much of everything this year has been posturing, signalling, and field prep in anticipation of the CBA negotiations to come.
Who’s responsible for deciding to not go with the bubble route? MLB or MLBPA? I think they should get the lion’s share of the blame.
My understanding is that the MLBPA refused to discuss a bubble scenario back in April/May.
If that’s true, that’s a macro version of the Marlins playing Friday after four positive tests. Players (well-to-do guys generally, young guys almost uniformly) have shown themselves not to be the most adept at risk assessment and mitigation.
Which, I get it; I didn’t make great long-term decisions at 24 either, and I wasn’t pulling down $500,000, or $5,000,000.
Obviously the plan needs some input and buy-in from them and their union, but the owners needed to step up and be the adults in the room. (Of course the relationship between the owners and players was so rancorous anyway, that either party is always immediately distrustful of any ideas from the other side, which didn’t help in the planning stages of the nascent season.)
Just dropping in to say purists have no business commenting this season about puristy things. Just leave it alone. There’s a huge virus.
It seems that the questions now are:
Will there be a .500 hitter this season and
Will some pitcher(s) have an ERA of 0.00?
I’ve thought from Spring Training 2.0 that a season would never be finished. But I’m sort of puzzled at all the blame being heaped upon the owners. I didn’t like the way they negotiated with the MLBPA but they aren’t forcing any one to play against their will.
I’ve started thinking that the players hate the idea of having to stay home and ruminate on all the bad news just as much as we do.
Manfred a republican from the South? He sure makes decisions like he is.
Since we have a Fascist, genocidal NAZI dictator running the country, who is surprised that there is pressure to risk death just to entertain and distract the masses?
President Trump wants millions of deaths to occur. The more COVID deaths, the better. It lets him “delay” the election and extend his reign of terror as long as the death keeps up.
The death toll will keep surging until there is a new president. If you re-elect President Trump, you have blood on your hands.
wtf?
Some this reaction is caused by people still treating Covid 19 as if it were the Black Death. Yes, the Marlins games should have been postponed because of so many positive tests. No, the others shouldn’t have. If there are only one or two or three players who test positive, that’s what the expanded rosters are for. Try and trace where the infections came from, adjust protocols and play on. The notion that no one would ever get the virus during the MLB season was a pipe dream.
I haven’t seen it yet, so I’ll throw out that a lot of soccer leagues in europe had positive tests followed by negative follow up tests after isolation. I’m wondering how many Marlins that would be true for- from all accounts, no one was taking this very seriously, so these could very well be true positives despite the oversensitivity of the test.
One weird thing is that the tests are sometimes radically different across countries. The tests that the US use are something like 10x more sensitive to COVID-19 than the ones used in Russia. In other news, Russia has had a lot of deaths of “pneumonia” and not of COVID-19.
I could totally see this being a weird quirk of the tests used in Europe.
It’s shocking they had no contingency for this, when it seems awfully expected. It’s also weird that scheduling flexibility was not planned out, when, again, the idea of cancelling/postponing games seemed super likely. What a mess.
Can anyone elaborate on why so much faith is being placed in 3 things that are PROVEN, through testing, long before this particular event ever started? If you do your research, you will figure out that people cannot really be protected from such a widespread virus.
1. Air-conditioning systems in enclosed building re-circulate the air and their filters do not stop viruses by any meaningful degree.
2. Masks do not stop the virus spreading by any meaningful degree and even IF they did, air-conditioning would pretty much make that mute. The size of the virus is so much smaller than the holes in a mask.
3. Many tests being used are up to 50% inaccurate, and the newer ones are claiming numbers that are not even evaluated by the FDA as they have stated labs can pretty much claim anything as long as they are working to develop new tests. When has the FDA, in the past, had so little care in companies claims of accuracy in testing?
Once you figure this out, you can start to make good decisions on why all this arguing about baseball/no baseball is ridiculous.
…..mute?
“many tests” are “up to 50% inaccurate” – citation? Honestly would like to see that if true, from a reputable source
Either play knowing players will get sick and they will have to use reserves or cancel this Exhibition Season.
From Jared Diamond of the Wall Street Journal, who apparently actually does reporting, as opposed to baseless speculation:
Derek Jeter debunks the (completely absurd) idea that the Marlins decided to play their July 26 game against the Phillies. All the relevant league officials — including the Covid-19 joint committee — knew about the Marlins’ positives. Those in power decided to proceed.