‘Not worth the risk’ — Williams decides to leave wife, kids behind in Arizona
Trevor Williams has spent the past few months at home in Arizona, living with his wife, Jackie, and their three kids, all under the age of 4. Suffice to say, summer camp at PNC Park should be drastically different than quarantine time. And quieter. That’s because Williams made the difficult decision to live apart from his family for the 2020 season, a reality that will likely be encountered across much of Major League Baseball as players report to their home cities for the resumption of spring training.
For Williams, it was a tough-but-necessary decision. To try and keep everyone healthy, and to eliminate any potential logistical issues, Jackie and the kids would stay back in Arizona while Trevor focused on baseball for three months.
“It’s just not worth the risk,” Williams said Tuesday. “There’s still a lot of unknown. I hope we stay in Pittsburgh for three months, but in the event
something happens in a month and we all have to go to a bubble city or stay in a hotel, it’s not worth it to have a family of five stuck in a hotel suite. It just gives them more freedom to go out and about.”
The 2020 season will be nothing like Williams — or any MLB player — has ever experienced, which is probably the best way to summarize this particular discussion.
Even though Williams on Tuesday discussed his readiness, the good and bad parts of a shortened season and also whether he’s at all uneasy about playing baseball right now, the jumping-off point was a decision that had to be incredibly difficult to make. But after adopting a baby girl (JoJo) and having a boy during a crazy, sixmonth stretch — Jude was born Jan. 6, 2020 — Trevor and Jackie Williams pretty much had no other choice.
“In the event I get the coronavirus, it’s not fair that they have to be stuck with me and they can’t leave for two weeks as well,” Trevor said. “Everyone is making sacrifices this year in one way or another. It was a tough decision, but at the end of the day, it’s a sacrifice that we needed to make because it’s not worth it. Too much unknown.”
It’s also unknown whether MLB will be able to work around some of the COVID19 spikes that have occurred in various parts of the country, whether that’s with restrictions in cities or keeping the virus from running roughshod through a clubhouse.
There are testing protocols, but nothing is certain, creating an increased level of risk for all involved. Williams said he doesn’t have any huge concerns about playing, trusting that owners and players finally have a common goal.
“They’re not going to put us in harm’s way intentionally,” Williams said. “Both sides really want to play.”
Williams said he expects that to manifest itself in players being super diligent about where they go, what they do and how frequently they wash their hands, with nobody wanting to screw it up for everyone else and knowing that a couple missed weeks could cause serious problems.
The comparison Williams made was that every one of his starts in a normal season will feel like three or four now.
“If you miss two weeks, that’s a big chunk of your season,” Williams said. “That can’t happen. In a playoff push, in my case, you can’t have one of the starters go down for two weeks and hope they’re better in two weeks and be the same in terms of being built up with innings.
“I think most guys are going to do everything they can to stay safe and not put themselves in situations where there’s a higher risk of getting COVID.”
One bit of good news is that Williams believes the Pirates’ starting pitchers are fairly far along in their buildup. In Arizona, Williams had been working with pitching coach Oscar Marin almost daily since the two of them live so close together.
Every fifth day, Williams said, he was throwing a live bullpen against local hitters. HeandMarinalsodeveloped return plans for four weeks out, Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. They had to scrap them, sure, but Williams has also been close to ready a few times.
“I could go out and pitch four innings in a game,” Williams said. “We’ll be good as far as buildup goes. Most of our starters are in the same boat because of the plan in place from Oscar.”
One way of looking at a shortened season is that teams such as the Pirates may stand a better chance of competing. For sample size alone, there’s a solid argument there.
But Williams believes all teams have a similar advantage in these 60 games — provided they don’t have any serious injuries or positive COVID-19 tests among key players.
It will be, the Pirates pitcher insisted, a pretty interesting crapshoot.
“It’s really up for grabs,” Williams said. “With 40 games of division play, it’s going to be amplified even further. But I think it’s going to be interesting. I think everyone can see a benefit from this if they get hot at the right time and go for it.”