A’S SEE REALITY OF SEQUESTERED PLAY
Oakland players consider challenges of sequestered baseball season in Arizona
Jesús Luzardo found a couple of ways to keep busy during the MLB season’s hiatus.
Back in South Florida, his home state, Luzardo, has been long tossing and pitching off an artificial mound with A’s righthanded pitcher (and fellow Floridian) Mike Fiers on a grassy expanse next to a church parking lot. He’s taking online classes at the University of Florida, where he is a sociology major. He’s Tiger King, of course, and just started Ozark from the Netflix show’s beginning.
Luzardo’s also been playing
Call of Duty, FIFA, and, of course, played as himself on MLB the Show 20. It didn’t take long before Luzardo, who has a 71 ranking, switched to left-hander Sean Manaea, who has an 81 ranking.
“I’d get mad if I gave up a bunch of runs as my character,” Luzardo said in a phone conversation. “If I end up giving up a bunch of runs, I have no one to blame but myself.”
Throwing off artificial mounds and delving into The Show’s alternate baseball reality is the closest Luzardo has come to playing an actual game of baseball. Teamwide, thirst for some real game action was temporarily quenched
with rumors that the MLB and MLB Player's Association were considering a season in which clubs and players would be sequestered in isolated hotel rooms, freed only to play games in Arizona's empty, fan-less stadiums as early as mid-May.
The MLB caught up to ESPN's initial report on the plan with a statement on Tuesday clarifying that, while the intent is to find a safe method to start the baseball season, no plan has been agreed upon: “While we have discussed the idea of staging games at one location as one potential option, we have not settled on that option or developed a detailed plan. While we continue to interact regularly with governmental and public health officials, we have not sought or received the approval of any plan from federal, state, and local officials, or the Players Association.”
Nothing is settled, but pause for one moment to consider the measures players, coaches, ballpark and clubhouse staff, media — or whoever else is deemed worthy of living inside this bubble — would take to execute the suggested plan. Mound visits would be prohibited. Dugouts would be near empty, and the players would be sprinkled around Arizona's scorching, open-air stadium seats at least six feet apart, per social distancing rules. Some seven-inning doubleheaders might be in order, too, with umpires temporarily replaced by robot-umps to further mitigate typical close contact behind the plate in an otherwise relatively contact-less sport.
And that's just on the field. Players would be shuttled back to their single hotel rooms and essentially prohibited from contact with the outside world for the 4.5 months it might take to compete in this historically unorthodox regular season. Per the initial ESPN report, precluding any play would be a uniform coronavirus testing system, security, and transportation for all involved.
If deemed safe, these are major, game-altering concepts with mind-boggling aesthetic implications. What's a baseball game with no high-fives after home runs? No home plate celebrations after a walk-off? No head-to-head manager and umpire disputes over balls and strikes? Players won't be able to spit. Can pitchers still lick their fingers— a cursory habit?
If families can't join the players in isolation, when will they see loved ones? Will players subscribe to this new kind of an alternate reality and forgo some basic independence to play baseball? It depends. Former A's starter and father Brett Anderson tweeted his disproval of a possible extended separation from his family.
“It begins and ends right here,” Anderson tweeted in response to ESPN's Jeff Passan's note on the possibility that families will be separated indefinitely.
Luzardo, who was (and is) looking primed for a rookie of the year campaign year, is just looking forward to getting a season going, safely, after injuries riddled his big league come up.
“I see how it could be a problem for other people, people who have kids and families,” 22-year-old Luzardo said. “For me, personally, I wouldn't mind. Hanging out at a hotel and playing baseball doesn't sound too bad for me.”
A's jack-of-all-trades Chad Pinder has a bit more to juggle.
Back in Charlotte, North Carolina, Pinder is keeping in baseball shape in a makeshift gym set up in his new home's garage. He's also helping to take care of his wife, Taylor, who is four months pregnant.
“There's so much uncertainty that it's hard to me wrap my head around this,” he said over the phone. “I'm just trying to go to Whole Foods without getting coronavirus.”
Pinder is uniquely caught up in this new normal as he tries to keep his growing family safe on a day-byday basis. But, he understands that players need to stay at the ready when the light flashes green — even if it involves diving headfirst into four-plus sequestered months in Arizona with no fans.
“If that's what's decided upon between the union and MLB, that's what we do,” Pinder said. “It's going to be odd. It's going to be weird. The weirdest thing will be empty stands.”
Weird, sure, but baseball players are built to adapt to changing situations.
“You're going to see that whatever we do, baseball players are going to adjust,” Pinder said. “Baseball is about adjustments. We just want to play. If there's an opportunity to do so, whenever we can do something safe, we're going to do that.”
Understood, too, is that in any circumstance, teams will need to have a truncated spring (or, maybe summer) training to reramp up. Hitters will need competitive space to regain their timing. Luzardo can go a couple of innings now (and looked practically un-hittable in March before games were shut down), but he needs a runway to reup his pitch count. He just wants his shot.
“It threw me for a loop, yeah,” Luzardo said of the proposal. “But I'll do whatever it takes to play. At the same time, in my eyes, to compete or have a competitive atmosphere and not high five a teammates, or sit six feet away from the whole team in the sun… I'd see it being a difficult environment to compete it. But would I do it? Of course.”
“There’s so much uncertainty that it’s hard to me wrap my head around this. I’m just trying to go to Whole Foods without getting coronavirus.” — A’s player Chad Pinder