Covid and MLB

joe dokes

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 18, 2005
30,240
It's much easier for hockey and basketball to share space. There are half as many games and the games themselves are shorter. You need more than twice as many playing surfaces to accomplish the same thing in baseball.
You can also get more playing surfaces into a smaller geographic area. NBA baseline to baseline is about the same as home to first. And the length of an NHL rink isnt much longer than home to the edge of the dirt behind 2nd.
 

cannonball 1729

Member
SoSH Member
Sep 8, 2005
3,572
The Sticks
I’m sorry if I missed it, but why wasn’t MLB in a bubble? I know there are more players than in the NBA and I remember the initial states they were discussing - FL and AZ are hotspots - but was it a matter of players not wanting to be away from their families that long or owner intransigence? Because it really seems like sports in the US at least aren’t going to work without a strict bubble.
The big thing was that when the negotiations started, they were talking about spring training plus half a season plus expanded playoffs in a bubble. Many of the players balked at being in a bubble for that long. This wasn't just the NBA playing ten games and playoffs - this was half a year in a bubble without family. The players understandably balked at that.
 

E5 Yaz

Transcends message boarding
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Apr 25, 2002
90,018
Oregon
MLB is now making up the schedule on the fly. Yankees in Baltimore for Wed and Thurs, instead of hosting Philadelphia.

Maybe this is the new normal, but it sure seems like they haven't a clue
 

DJnVa

Dorito Dawg
SoSH Member
Dec 16, 2010
53,841
Unless MLB plans to announce a two week extension to the season for all the present and future postponements, they're probably done for this year..
Do you mean you don't think they'll make it til September? Because they clearly aren't done right now.
 

YTF

Member
SoSH Member
View: https://twitter.com/ryryjones/status/1288155062410383360?s=21


"Rumor mill: multiple Marlins players visted a strip club in ATL after the Braves exhibition game. This is probably what kickstarted the case train in the lockerroom. "

fire Mattingly if true
If you want to bang on Mattingly for allowing allowing players decide on whether or not to play, I'm all ears. Unless Mattingly signed off on post game field trips I go after the players FIRST on this.
 
Last edited:

E5 Yaz

Transcends message boarding
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Apr 25, 2002
90,018
Oregon
Yeah, the strip club story changes my view a bit ... it might even serve as a cautionary tale for all pro sports teams
 

DJnVa

Dorito Dawg
SoSH Member
Dec 16, 2010
53,841
Yeah, the strip club story changes my view a bit ... it might even serve as a cautionary tale for all pro sports teams
So, that's 2 major sports with recent issues tied to Atlanta strip clubs.
 

EvilEmpire

paying for his sins
Moderator
SoSH Member
Apr 9, 2007
17,178
Washington
Do you mean you don't think they'll make it til September? Because they clearly aren't done right now.
Yeah, that's what I mean. There is only so much flexibility with dates and possible double headers and this Marlins thing shows how fast and easy things can blow up. So I think they need more time on the back end as a cushion for makeups. I think the current crisis is using up too much flexibility and it isn't reasonable to not expect other problems down the road.

Edit: I don't think extending the season would be super hard either, though obviously not something they'd want to do.
 

PseuFighter

Silent scenester
SoSH Member
Dec 22, 2003
14,408
1. why not make the marlins forfeit?
2. do the players get paid for forfeited games? (is this even in the cba or whatever they're working off of this year?)
 

CR67dream

blue devils forevah!
Dope
SoSH Member
Oct 4, 2001
7,202
I'm going home
To be fair, it's a twitter account with 1600 followers that is "reporting" this, so maybe we should pump the brakes.
That's reasonable, but if you're someone who wants the league to keep playing, wouldn't it be preferable that the outbreak came out of some sort of stupid behavior like this than if it happened through every day interactions, especially if it stays contained to the Marlins?

At least in this scenario it would be a hell of a wake up call and perhaps give a little hope that being responsible going forward could actually possibly allow them to pull this off.

If it's traced to some sort of regular, every day activity, the implications for finishing this season up would seem to be a hell of a lot worse.
 

scottyno

late Bloomer
SoSH Member
Dec 7, 2008
11,304
Wait, strip clubs are open? The pizza delivery man wears a hazmat suit but you can still put a $20 in a thong. This must be a Georgia thing.
Not sure what they're doing in Georgia, but in Las Vegas some of them are now open as essentially bikini bars with no dances or touching.
 

DeJesus Built My Hotrod

Well-Known Member
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Dec 24, 2002
48,205
Lou Will was just picking up hot wings. Perk is way off base and people are overreacting.

As a side note, I don't think any athletes will want Jack Harlow hanging around them going forward. What's poppin indeed...


32916
 

Papelbon's Poutine

Homeland Security
SoSH Member
Dec 4, 2005
19,615
Portsmouth, NH
You can also get more playing surfaces into a smaller geographic area. NBA baseline to baseline is about the same as home to first. And the length of an NHL rink isnt much longer than home to the edge of the dirt behind 2nd.
Yeah, I played around with it yesterday and including foul territory at any stadium not named Fenway, you could pretty easily fit 8 basketball courts on one baseball field, square footage wise.
 

snowmanny

Member
SoSH Member
Dec 8, 2005
15,667
Why not just cancel these games and count the Marlins’ record based only on the games they actually play? If some teams play 60 and some play 48 what real difference does it make?
 

Gdiguy

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 15, 2005
6,231
San Diego, CA
I'm surprised with how many people are being a bit strict with respect to the options being 'follow the season plan' and 'cancel everything'

I dunno; I guess I went into this with the notion that (1) this 'season' was kind of an exhibition season anyway and so who really cares if a team skips 2 weeks or a bunch of games get cancelled, and (2) we had to expect that a team would at some point have a bunch of cases. So it happening this early is maybe faster than I expected, but nothing that's happened really changes my prior as to what to expect for this 'season'?

That's why I said the other day - if a player get hospitalized (or, god forbid, passes away), I think then the shock might actually end the season. But as long as it's 'a bunch of players test positive and a team has to cancel a few games', I'm not really sure why your expectation for the season getting played or not would have changed between last week and today

*edit - to me, this is a completely separate discussion thread from 'should they have started playing at all' - I've been pretty firmly in the 'this is a terrible idea' camp for a long time. But unless they were seriously expecting their current setup to result in no outbreaks among teams (which is ludicrously stupid), once they decided to go ahead it seems they were committing to going through with it if a team has an outbreak like this
 
In a normal season, games postponed due to rain late in the calendar don't have to be made up if there are no postseason implications. That could solve most if not all of the Marlins games that have to be cancelled, *if* the Marlins are out of postseason contention at the end of September (probable) and their opponents either are similarly out of the running (possible in some cases) or have mathematically secured their playoff places (in which case you just toss the games out even if they could have had a seeding impact).

For the other postponed games that remain, MLB needs to pretty quickly come up with a solution for what happens to the games and/or the standings. A few options, some of which aren't mutually exclusive (and some of which are certainly out there):

1) Use whatever spare days are available to reschedule at least some of them - with doubleheaders involved if required.
2) Reschedule them for the end of the season, and push back the start of the playoffs accordingly - with or without doubleheaders to shorten the timespan.
3) Ignore the games, and use each team's winning percentage as the final arbiter to determine postseason standings.
4) Use the teams' final winning percentages as the basis for calculating the results of unplayed games - e.g., if a three-game series were cancelled between two teams with exactly .500 records, give them each 1.5 wins and 1.5 losses in the standings.
5) Same as 4), except using those percentages as the basis of randomly determining the results of the games - e.g., in the same aforementioned three-game series, you'd have a computer flip a virtual coin three times to determine the winner of each unplayed game. (Which sounds totally ridiculous, but for one, imagine the TV ratings for "Simulation Sunday!", and for two, World Cup soccer tournaments have actually drawn lots in the past to determine which winner in a tied group should advance, so there is some precedent.)

The likeliest option would seem to me to be a combination of 1) and 3), with the possibility of punishing teams like the Marlins whose negligence leads to games being cancelled (without also rewarding any teams with forfeit wins). But the solution(s) chosen will have to be along these lines, and it/they should be able to save the season. Yes, some teams will benefit and some teams will get screwed by the arbitrary nature of any solution(s) implemented, but having 16 teams in the playoffs instead of 10 makes it easier to ignore the complaints of any team that gets screwed out of a playoff berth - if you wanted to play in the postseason, finishing better than .500 would have helped. (Which is the same logic for why I'd like to see 6-8 teams in a college football playoff instead of 4, but I digress...)

Incidentally, what would happen if a team plane were to crash during the season and most or all of the players and staff aboard were to die? I'd have thought that a properly run sports league would have some sort of contingency plan to cover this sort of situation, or at least to have thought about what should happen...and perhaps some lessons from that planning could apply here.
 

scottyno

late Bloomer
SoSH Member
Dec 7, 2008
11,304
Incidentally, what would happen if a team plane were to crash during the season and most or all of the players and staff aboard were to die? I'd have thought that a properly run sports league would have some sort of contingency plan to cover this sort of situation, or at least to have thought about what should happen...and perhaps some lessons from that planning could apply here.
They do, or at least did as of 2008, the commish has the right to either cancel their season or hold an emergency dispersal draft in the event of "an event causing the death, dismemberment, or permanent disability of at least five players from a team's active, injured, or suspended roster during a season (including the playoffs), or at least six players during the off-season"

Quoting from wiki, but it's apparently in the official mlb rulebook too

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disaster_draft#Major_League_Baseball
 
They do, or at least did as of 2008, the commish has the right to either cancel their season or hold an emergency dispersal draft in the event of "an event causing the death, dismemberment, or permanent disability of at least five players from a team's active, injured, or suspended roster during a season (including the playoffs), or at least six players during the off-season"

Quoting from wiki, but it's apparently in the official mlb rulebook too

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disaster_draft#Major_League_Baseball
Thanks. I'm not sure how helpful that is to the current situation after all, insofar as you're not likely to wind up with 5+ players on the same team suffering death or permanent disability from COVID-19. But the concept of cancelling a team's season - but not the entire league season - could come into play here. Who apart from a few dozen Marlins fans would cry if they were simply excluded from the league this year, and everyone else carried on as normal? (We're probably not at that point yet, but that could happen to a team...although I expect MLB's response would be rather different to an outbreak on the Yankees than the same outbreak on the Marlins.)
 

YTF

Member
SoSH Member
Why not just cancel these games and count the Marlins’ record based only on the games they actually play? If some teams play 60 and some play 48 what real difference does it make?
It would depend on how many times you have to do this and how many teams are affected. That said I don't imagine it would take too many more instances like this before the plug is pulled
 
FWIW, in this article on ESPN.com, Bradford Doolittle notes:
If the Marlins play fewer games, what does that mean in the standings?
Playoff standings are based on winning percentage and if teams don't play the same number of games, then they will be ranked accordingly. Baseball already has said that tiebreaker games will not be used this year, so you would expect that to extend to situations where a team finishes within a half-game of another club in the playoff standings as a result of cancellations. Thus we could have a team like the 1972 Red Sox (85-70), who finished a half-game back of the Tigers (86-70) for the AL East title because the season was shortened by an early-season strike and no games were made up.
So a) a reminder that there is some precedent here (involving the Sox), and b) winning percentage is already the final arbiter of playoff positioning. Although of course...
From the Elias Sports Bureau: There has never been an American League or National League season in which one team played more than five fewer games than the rest of its counterparts. The last time this happened in any major league was the 1890 American Association, when Baltimore played just 38 games, Brooklyn played 100 games and the rest of the league played 125.
 

snowmanny

Member
SoSH Member
Dec 8, 2005
15,667
There have been sham seasons in the past to one degree or another. 1981. Ask the Red Sox about 1972, as CP alluded to. Ask the Red Sox about 1943-1945 for that matter.
 

PedroKsBambino

Well-Known Member
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Apr 17, 2003
31,191
Have we focused enough on how the team run by Derek Jeter and managed by Don Mattingly caused this mess?

This Mess is the fault of embedded Yankees. Let’s not bury the lede all...
 

Marciano490

Urological Expert
SoSH Member
Nov 4, 2007
62,312
Have we focused enough on how the team run by Derek Jeter and managed by Don Mattingly caused this mess?

This Mess is the fault of embedded Yankees. Let’s not bury the lede all...
Ironically, the Yankees might’ve had the best team this year, so...
 

Gdiguy

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 15, 2005
6,231
San Diego, CA
FWIW, in this article on ESPN.com, Bradford Doolittle notes:

From the Elias Sports Bureau: There has never been an American League or National League season in which one team played more than five fewer games than the rest of its counterparts. The last time this happened in any major league was the 1890 American Association, when Baltimore played just 38 games, Brooklyn played 100 games and the rest of the league played 125.

So a) a reminder that there is some precedent here (involving the Sox), and b) winning percentage is already the final arbiter of playoff positioning. Although of course...
This is the height of silliness - "There has never been an American League or National League season in which one team played more than five fewer games than the rest of its counterparts." - yeah, and there's never been a 60 game season or a 16 team postseason due to a pandemic either. Sometimes precedent really doesn't work and trying to bind yourself to arbitrary parts of precedent while ignoring the main distinction is just silly
 

joe dokes

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 18, 2005
30,240
Looking forward to 7 inning doubleheaders and other rule changes to fit in the extra games
This sounds pretty awesome.

https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/june-26-1944-the-tri-cornered-war-bond-baseball-game/
This round-robin format had each team come to bat six times. Each team batted three times against each of the other two teams’ defenses. In case anyone was confused with this scheme, New York Times writer Arthur Daley suggested that “a sufficient number of traffic policemen be installed at strategic points in order to avoid snarls of various descriptions.”
 

johnmd20

mad dog
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Dec 30, 2003
61,996
New York City
Looking forward to 7 inning doubleheaders and other rule changes to fit in the extra games
5 inning games. Maximum of 5 pitchers per game. Lineups are only 5 hitters(pinch runners can be used in an unlimited fashion) Fielding is the normal 9. Imagine 5 player lineups?

Let's make it crazy!
 

DeadlySplitter

Member
SoSH Member
Oct 20, 2015
33,251
Phillies won't play Friday either, DH against the Jays on Saturday. Guess internally they think wait until Saturday is ok.
 

bankshot1

Member
SoSH Member
Feb 12, 2003
24,652
where I was last at
I'd be more pumped for 2-on-2 whiffle ball tourney to settle the MLB season,

And I don't know how MLB handles the testing and reporting but how the F do the Marlin players knowing they're infected make the call to play the game?

Doesn't the team drs. and players and presumably the FO know what the health of players are, particularly now?

The chain of command from the team receiving the medical information should have gone to the respective players, the FO and the FO should have told MLB-Manfred immediately.

I haven't read where the chain broke-ie who decided to let the players make the medical call to play despite being infected.

It was beyond irresponsible.

Jete's own this.
 
Last edited:

joe dokes

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 18, 2005
30,240
5 inning games. Maximum of 5 pitchers per game. Lineups are only 5 hitters(pinch runners can be used in an unlimited fashion) Fielding is the normal 9. Imagine 5 player lineups?

Let's make it crazy!
Back in summer camp, 50 or so years ago, when the entire camp was divided into 2 teams for color war (I'm sure it wasn't just my camp), the big softball game had everyone on each team bat once. So maybe 75-100 on each team, once through the "lineup." But the defense could only have the usual 10.
So 1 inning each, everyone bats once. Ties are ties.
 

tmracht

Member
SoSH Member
Aug 19, 2009
3,070
Back in summer camp, 50 or so years ago, when the entire camp was divided into 2 teams for color war (I'm sure it wasn't just my camp), the big softball game had everyone on each team bat once. So maybe 75-100 on each team, once through the "lineup." But the defense could only have the usual 10.
So 1 inning each, everyone bats once. Ties are ties.
Sign me up that's the way we used to play kickball.
 

LoweTek

Well-Known Member
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
May 30, 2005
2,183
Central Florida
"Rumor mill: multiple Marlins players visted a strip club in ATL after the Braves exhibition game. This is probably what kickstarted the case train in the lockerroom."
Occam's razor everyone. The Marlins are among the youngest teams in baseball. They are in Miami, long one of the hottest of Covid hot spots in the country and still is. The hottest Covid hot spot in Miami is South Beach, an enclave of nightlife for the young and beautiful people who throw caution to the wind and party until all hours with no regard for distancing or masking. I think it's safe to speculate they got their infections right at home.
 

Rovin Romine

Johnny Rico
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Jul 14, 2005
23,686
Miami (oh, Miami!)