MLB has ‘hopeful’ plan to play for 2020 but no guarantees
Outlines proposed medical and safety protocols for starting delayed season
WASHINGTON A critical week in baseball’s quest to launch its delayed 2020 season began with a squabble over money and ended with a dissection of safety and testing protocols. But the sport, despite its efforts, is materially no closer to getting back on the field — a reality less about any fundamental rifts between owners and players than about the unsettling truth about this global pandemic: the coronavirus is still in charge.
As soon as Friday, Major League Baseball is expected to give its union an 80-page document laying out its proposed medical and safety protocols for starting the season, which has been delayed for nearly seven weeks and counting in the pandemic.
Commissioner Rob Manfred spelled out many of its details on an interview with CNN on Thursday night: Players and other personnel would be tested “multiple” times per week, supplemented by daily temperature checks and occasional antibody testing. The Utah lab that administers baseball’s drug-testing program will run its coronavirus testing. A positive test from a player would not necessitate a two- or three-week shutdown of the sport, or even the player’s team, but would require the player to be quarantined until testing negative twice within a 24hour period.
“Our experts are advising us that we don’t need a (league-wide) 14day quarantine,” Manfred said. “The positive individual will be removed from the group (and) quarantined, then contact tracing with the individual and point-ofcare testing with the individuals to minimize the chance there’s been a spread.”
But it was perhaps most telling that Manfred, when asked by CNN host Anderson Cooper how likely it is that fans will see baseball this year, spoke not in terms of confidence, but of hope.
“I think it’s hopeful that we will have some (baseball) this summer,” Manfred said. “We are making plans for playing in empty stadiums. But as I’ve said before, all of those plans are dependent on what the public health situation is and us reaching the conclusion that it will be safe for our players and other employees to come back to work.”
There are important negotiations still to come regarding the logistics, the medical protocols and — yes — the economics of getting back on the field, all of it saddled with a rough deadline of the end of this month, with baseball targeting a mid-june opening of “spring training 2.0” and a regular season of 82 games starting on or around July 4.
The union will want to know, for example, whether MLB — which says its tests will be manufactured and administered out of the Utah lab, and thus won’t be diverted from the general population — can ensure that the deployment of thousands of tests per week can be done ethically, given reports of shortages in some states.
Players will want to understand the ramifications and ensure access to testing for immediate family members. Some, including those with pre-existing medical conditions, will want to know what happens if they opt out for health reasons. Although Manfred told CNN no one would “force” those players to pay, what would be the personal cost for opting out, in terms of lost income or service time?
And while MLB has yet to present an economic plan to the union — which contends the economic plan was already settled by a March agreement that called for players to receive prorated portions of their 2020 salaries based on the number of games played — that fight lingers out there as another potential roadblock.
The union’s icy reception earlier this week to leaked details of MLB’S proposed 50-50 split of revenue in 2020 — union chief Tony Clark called it a “salary cap” and a non-starter — could prompt the league to modify its economic proposal when it eventually makes one. But what remains clear is the players’ firm disinclination to accept a further reduction on salaries on top of the one it made in March.
In truth, even two months after the sport was first shut down, Manfred still can’t say definitively when, where or how baseball will return. Only the virus can do that.
All of those plans (to start the season) are dependent on what the public health situation is.