MLB Should Focus On 2021 Season

With no baseball games to watch, no players to analyze and no prospects to track, we’ve found ourselves over at The Warehouse (subscribe!) talking quite a bit lately about what a season might look like if owners and players ever decided to buckle down, get together and hammer out a deal in good faith.

How many games could they get in? How crazy should they get with expanding the playoffs? What is the fairest way to split the pie? Which changes implemented for a bizarre, short-term 2020 season will stick around for the long-term (universal DH!).

(You can discuss this on the BSL Board here.)

Where these discussions often lead us to is this question: Can they even pull off a return to action safely?

The more I think about this, the more I come up with this answer: No, they can’t.

Why can’t they? To answer this question, let’s look at a series of headlines:

“MLB teams will now train at their home ballparks due to coronavirus concerns”

“At least a quarter of LSU football team quarantined due to virus”

“NHL says 11 players have tested positive for COVID-19” (including Toronto star Auston Matthews)

“NFLPA suggests players should avoid group workouts”

“Florida’s coronavirus situation complicates NBA’s plans”

These are not just recent headlines. These are all from Saturday.

You can blame Rob Manfred or Tony Clark or Chris Davis (too easy?) or whoever you like for the bad-faith arguments, the antagonistic posturing and the counter-productive, through-the-media, tit-for-tat negotiations. And you should. At the very least they should have been gearing toward a return by now, if not already playing games. The fact that they aren’t is both disheartening and embarrassing.

But in the long run, it really wouldn’t have mattered all that much. If they had started playing games already, the continuing spread of the virus would probably be shutting them down soon anyway.

This part of it is not baseball’s fault, but the fault of all of us, as a collective unit. As a country. The lockdown, which is now coming to an end due primarily to our own boredom, accomplished little. This is because we have failed, and continue to fail, to come up with any sort of urgent, cohesive national strategy to stop COVID-19.

For this, the blame falls on our inability, or perhaps disinterest, to give any sort of coherent guidance from a federal level. And the guidance has to come from the federal level. Allowing state and county and city officials to craft COVID-19 plans willy-nilly only works if you don’t allow people to travel between states, counties and cities. Then you could at least figure out which plans work and which don’t. We don’t have such travel restrictions in this country, which is a good thing. But it complicates things.

For example, here in Los Angeles, they closed the beaches in LA County, while the beaches in Orange County remained open. Guess where the people went? Then the governor closed them all. Then they all opened. I think. The chaos is hard to track.

It’s like letting a group of middle schoolers decorate the rooms of your home. Some will put up some nice artwork, and some will staple candy bars and beef jerky to the walls. Guess which room most of the kids will end up in?

That’s why we have this:

And if you look around the world, you can see the difference.

In Germany, where they have a comprehensive national plan humming along smoothly, they have been playing professional soccer at the highest level since May 16. They’ve been doing so without fans in the stands. They test players twice a week, and they have strict rules for players and their families to follow.  It’s not a plan that is 100 percent guaranteed to avoid COVID-19 cases, but it’s a solid plan nonetheless. And it’s all made possible by Germany’s handling of the virus as a whole, by the plan and infrastructure they’ve put in place. It’s made possible by this:

For another example, we travel across the globe to South Korea, where several former or current MLB players have decided to ply their trade, and where beloved former Oriole Adam Jones is roping liners.

Korea’s top baseball league, the KBO, has been in action even longer than Germany’s Bundesliga, having taken the field back on May 5. They also play in front of empty stadiums. They also have strict restrictions in place on player movement away from the field. But unlike in Germany, according to former big leaguer Jamie Romak, they’re not testing players.

“I’ve never been tested once,” Romak said. “Everyone asks me that, but I’ve never been tested once. They have thermal temperature checks at the entrance every day. That’s not uncommon with a lot of places here. They want you to wear masks coming and going.”

The reason the KBO is in action is not so much that the KBO’s plan is guaranteed not to see any COVID-19 cases crop up. But it’s a good plan nonetheless. And it’s all made possible by South Korea’s handling of the virus as a whole, by the plan and infrastructure they’ve put in place. It’s made possible by this:

So again, you can throw some blame at Manfred and Clark for the childish slant to negotiations, for the lack of a deal or a plan, for the delay in returning to the field. That’s all fair.

But the real question, when you look at the situation on a national level, is whether or not they should attempt to return at all in 2020.

Can they return safely? The evidence, at this point in time, looking at the charts above, suggests that they cannot. Nor should they attempt to do so.

This part of it is not the fault of MLB’s players or owners, or even the lawyers. This one falls on all of us.

Hopefully, we’ll be able to watch MLB in action in 2021. Hopefully players and fans will be able to flock to Arizona and Florida for spring training in February and March. Hopefully we’ll be able to watch first pitches be thrown out all across the country soon after.

Keep your fingers crossed for that. And in the meantime, wear a mask.