Union sends ‘wide-ranging’ response to MLB proposal
WASHINGTON The Major League Baseball Players Association responded late Thursday afternoon to the league’s proposed medical and safety protocols for opening the 2020 season amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, a union official confirmed.
“The union has spent the past several days carefully reviewing the manual and gathering feedback from its medical experts and players across the league, including a 3½-hour video conference with 100-plus player leaders on Monday night,” the official said.
The union’s response to MLB was described as “wide-ranging” with questions, suggestions and requests for clarification on issues such as testing frequency, protocols for positive tests, the presence of on-site medical personnel, protections for high-risk players and family members, access to pre- and post-game therapies and sanitization protocols.
The league sent its original proposal, a highly detailed, 67-page manual that covered issues such as testing, social-distancing guidelines and risk mitigation, last Friday.
Baseball hopes to open its season around July 4, preceded by a roughly three-week “spring training 2.0” beginning in mid-june, which gives the sides until roughly the first week of June to reach an agreement. The sport hopes to play in as many teams’ home stadiums as possible, with no fans present at least in the early stages.
The MLBPA began disseminating the document to its 1,200 members shortly after receiving it, commissioning a Spanish-language version for its Latin American players, and consulted with its own set of medical experts.
As the document made clear, playing a 2020 season will require significant modifications for players and all other essential personnel permitted into stadiums. Players, for example, would be barred from spitting or exchanging high fives, and would be discouraged from showering or using hydrotherapy pools at stadiums. Players would also be asked not to venture from their hotel on the road.
A central facet of MLB’S proposal was a testing program in which players and other essential, onfield personnel would be tested several times per week. However, Los Angeles Angels superstar Mike Trout is among those questioning whether that is enough frequency, telling ESPN this week, “I don’t see us playing without testing every day.”
Another union concern is that MLB’S testing program — which would be run out of the same Utah lab that administers the sport’s drug-testing program — would divert critical resources from the public, a factor MLB sought to address in its proposal by calling for additional tests to be made available in every major league city. The Washington Post