Ennder

I don't know that it's fair to blame Manfred. He's just a mouthpiece for what the owners want. I highly doubt he gets impacted in any way based on how $ is split up. If you side with players, then the owners are the enemy...not Manfred. Leadership in a crisis is why the commissioner gets piles of money. Clearly Manfred hasn't been up to the task. The notion that players, none of whom have underlying medical conditions that put them at anything more than .000001% more risk than normal of dying from this virus or even being seriously ill, are able to use their "fear" as a negotiating tool is ridiculous. For heaven's sake, Nascar is putting them to shame as are every other major sport. I'm 67 years old. I'm supposedly in the higher risk group. I'd have zero qualms about attending a game today in Miller Park provided the roof and panels were open, and the number of fans were limited to around 10,000 spread over the park. Heck I remember going to games in County Stadium late in Braves days and early Brewer days, where fans social distanced naturally. [REMOVED BY MODS] Yes the players have no reason to be scared, none of them have parents at home or wife's about to have babies, none of them have underlying conditions. Any player who is scared is an idiot and any commissioner that wants to see his players feel safe hates the game. This is just beyond silly. If the players can't be made to feel safe the season will not happen, a commissioner that wants the players to feel safe is a smart one, not one that isn't up to the task.

That article makes my point from earlier. The idea isn't that they are going to play like this for 4 months or that they are going to be doing this while the rest of the world is shut down. That is what most of these complaints were about. The country is going to be opened up in May most likely in a limited capacity, this will be part of that opening up. Assuming this is the path they go with once MLB tells the players the parameters of how this would likely work, none of the complaints in this article are complaints anymore.

You have this backwards though. The reality is baseball is almost certainly going to be played. The country is opening up in May whether people like it or not. It is just a matter of when in May. Korea is already back to playing baseball, Germany is ramping up to start its soccer season. It is much more likely that MLB happens than does not happen. They will have to take proper precautions and they shouldn't start until late May or early June but it is most likely going to happen. That is just the reality of what we see going around the world right now, not the theory that everything is going to be shut down until a vaccine comes online, that just isn't likely at all. Whether fans will be part of this and how many is certainly up for debate though.

It is a mixture of both but lack of testing definitely plays a role. I know there were a lot of Detroit first responders who were stuck in quarantine, they were sent a bunch of the new 15 minute tests and they released like 2/3rds of them to go back to work afterwards. I don't know which day in their quarantine it was but it wasn't the full time.

I think players complaining about the quarantine are doing so because articles are suggesting the entire season is going to be played like this. That is almost certainly not the case. This is an idea for a short term start to the season. I'd also add that I'm fully against lengthening the season on the other end. There are large concerns about another wave of virus come next fall when viruses tend to spread more aggressively. I wouldn't get greedy on the back end.

Because they can think they can get games in at normal stadiums in June/July they can't know it for sure. If they plan on an open day of July 1st and anything goes wrong they lose the season. If they played under these controlled settings and something goes wrong they still have a season, they are just stuck in Arizona longer. Adding every team travelling all over the country adds an insane amount of risk to the players so that has to be the step they are most careful with. That part is riskier than starting the games up in the first place is.

Nobody is talking about 3 or 4 or 5 months here. The word indefinitely just means there is no specific target date. If the league doesn't think they can move into normal stadiums for 3 months they just won't go along with this plan. This would almost certainly be a short term bridge to playing in normal stadiums. You have 2 weeks of spring training and then hopefully only 1 or 2 weeks of real games and then things have calmed down to where you go back to normal stadiums. In the past I said I thought we would get spring training in mid June and real games in July. This just allows this plan to move up 2-4 weeks earlier than what I thought would happen.

It is so odd how different see the world. I'd say the scales are tipping in favor of their being a season. 2 weeks ago people were still talking about the entire country being shut down until July and that is almost certainly not true anymore given we already seem to be moving into the apex. This virus has tracked exactly as expected so far so the worst case scenarios that were given are unlikely at this point and those were the scenarios that precluded baseball. I'll be surprised if people aren't going back to work in some fashion in May and that puts plausible team sports in June. The big step though is how well contact tracing works, if that has instant hiccups it could push everything back 2-3 more weeks and there isn't a ton of margin to work with. It also depends on whether they are going to be willing to play a few weeks without fans. Because I have a really hard time seeing crowds back before July. If they decide it isn't worth starting without fans then I don't think it happens. I mean really all we have to do is watch what happens in S. Korea and China. If they don't start up some sort of group events in the next 4-6 weeks or so it probably means we won't have a baseball season. They are more set up for a virus like this and they are a good 2 months ahead of us. The Korean Baseball League is playing scrimmages right now and hopes to be playing by April 20th. If that happens and they move to where there are crowds it is very hopeful that we get back to playing this season as well.

I meant number of hospitalizations. You don't really need to know the total number of people sick if you can track the most serious illnesses. The trend in people being hospitalized sort of shows what happened 7-14 days earlier for spread. Again there is a significant lag time and a wide range so it isn't great. Unfortunately we just really need testing to catch up to really understand the spread or we just need to wait another couple of weeks for the data to show up in how many people are dying.

If you want to actually track the virus I think it is really important to remember that number of cases doesn't mean anything because tests are a bottleneck. The next best way to track it is by hospitalizations but that just isn't widely available across every state. That means we are stuck tracking by deaths, not only is that morbid, it has a huge lag time. The average patient takes 19 days between getting infected and passing away. That means a large number of the people who died today got the virus before we were even told to stay home. It is a rather frustrating way to try to track things.

One other hurdle that I didn't think about before is the minor leagues. While the majors can still earn money off of games without fans the minors certainly can't. So that means what, each team has a practice squad if they were to play without fans?

You know if you install robot umpires, don't allow runners to steal bases or advance on passed balls and use the pitchers hand rule from when we were small, where if you get the ball to the pitcher while a runner is between bases he is out, you could probably play baseball and never get closer than 6 feet. Somebody start a petition!

The real issue with spring training probably is that Florida has been one of the slower states to react to things so likely will be one of the last to get through this. But I think they may do some sort of modified spring training where teams play outside of the normal facilities.

This has progressed mostly as expected so far. I think people just don't realize how slow the impact of changes happens. This virus takes 5-10 days to show up and another 5-10 days to progress to the point where people go to the hospital. There are still people going to the hospital today that were infected back when NBA games were still being played. Hospitalization rates are curving down already as the staying at home is just now showing its impact. Peak deaths in a day is coming in the next 2 weeks, 2 week period of plateau and then it starts to fall for a few of weeks. That points to some people going back to work most likely in mid to late May (Trump is going to push this earlier than some others would) but with strict rules around it still and with strict contact tracing put in place. The real question is how effective that will be, it is working well in Wuhan (supposedly) and worked well in South Korea. If it is effective I would guess spring training happens either the last week of May or in early June. Games played sometime in June without fans. I think July is probably the realistic target to allow large gatherings though, it needs to be a slow process going from control to large crowds because it is really hard to trace things when it hits a large crowd. The 5-15 minute test is a complete game changer as well. That had to be put in place before there was any hopes of anyone coming back to work. Those tests are portable as well and Abbott says they will be able to put out 5 million in April. When things do start up they can have one in the dugout and test players every day for the first few weeks if they really want to.

90% it is played, 10% it isn't. We have seen how other countries have gone through this. The numbers have leveled out in Iran, they are leveling out in Italy. The earliest counties of NY, Washington St and California to get the virus are all on the decline. This is something that seems to pass in a matter of a few months and not longer given proper procedures. Something would have to really change to not have baseball played by the end of the all star break at this point. The process here is trying to keep the healthcare system from being overwhelmed, containment doesn't seem to be a big issue assuming you treat this virus with the respect it deserves. The bigger question is whether we will get to full crowds or not. We very well may be playing baseball in August with stadiums at 25% or 50% capacity for crowds. Large crowds are going to be a scary thing for quite some time. Small outbreaks can be tracked and isolated but big crowds can't be controlled.