{"id":16638,"date":"2020-06-28T08:33:48","date_gmt":"2020-06-28T12:33:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=16638"},"modified":"2020-06-29T10:44:33","modified_gmt":"2020-06-29T14:44:33","slug":"do-we-really-think-theres-going-to-be-a-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=16638","title":{"rendered":"Do we really think there&#8217;s going to be a season?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I alluded to this in comments on the previous thread&#8230;. but it is a question worth asking.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcsports.com\/washington\/nationals\/heres-look-reported-mlb-timeline-2020-season\">rough timeline for the 2020 season<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Friday,\u00a0June 26: Transactions freeze ends at noon ET<\/li>\n<li>Sunday, June 28: Teams must submit 60-man player pool names by 3 p.m. ET<\/li>\n<li>Wednesday, July 1: Teams report to Training Camp 2.0<\/li>\n<li><strong>Friday, July 24: New Opening Day<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Monday, August 31: Trade deadline (usually July 31)<\/li>\n<li>Tuesday, September 15: Players must be on big league roster to be eligible for postseason<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So, notably, here we sit not even to July 1 yet, and we have the following issues:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlbtraderumors.com\/2020\/06\/40-mlb-players-and-staff-test-positive-for-coronavirus.html\">One third of MLB teams<\/a> have already reported players or staff testing positive out of their facilities.\u00a0 \u00a0The Rangers front-office staff had a run after being <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/story\/_\/id\/29372448\/rangers-staff-terrified-our-safety-amid-positive-virus-tests\">mandated to report to work<\/a> (that was nice of their management)<\/li>\n<li>Florida and Arizona are hot-spots for a new &#8220;wave&#8221; of CoronaVirus outbreaks.\u00a0 \u00a0Here&#8217;s Florida&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2020\/us\/florida-coronavirus-cases.html\">map of cases showing a huge up-tick<\/a> over the past few days.<\/li>\n<li>Arizona in particular now <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/health\/how-arizona-lost-control-of-the-epidemic\/2020\/06\/25\/f692a5a8-b658-11ea-aca5-ebb63d27e1ff_story.html\">leads the WORLD<\/a> in per-capita cases.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2020\/us\/arizona-coronavirus-cases.html\">Arizona&#8217;s chart of cases <\/a>lately.<\/li>\n<li>Toronto is in Canada.\u00a0 Canada has a) banned &#8220;non-essential&#8221; travel to and from the US, and b) requires <a href=\"https:\/\/www.canada.ca\/en\/public-health\/services\/diseases\/2019-novel-coronavirus-infection\/latest-travel-health-advice.html\">14-day quarantine<\/a> of incoming visitors.\u00a0 So where precisely is Toronto going to play?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>MLB has a plan, of course.\u00a0 And true to MLB fashion, its vague and arguable throughout.\u00a0 Per the &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbssports.com\/mlb\/news\/mlb-team-canceling-games-due-to-covid-19-outbreak-may-not-end-season-per-report\/\">contingency plan<\/a>&#8221; they can stop the season if:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>\u00a0if restrictions on travel throughout the country are imposed;<\/li>\n<li>if the season poses &#8220;an unreasonable health and safety risk to players or staff to stage those games,&#8221;; and<\/li>\n<li>if the competitive integrity of the season is compromised by the number of players who are available.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Those aren&#8217;t &#8220;or&#8221; clauses; they&#8217;re &#8220;and&#8221; clauses.\u00a0 Meaning all 3 need to take effect.\u00a0 #2 in particular seems particularly vague enough to basically never be agreed as being true by the 35-40% of this country that still seems to think this pandemic is a joke or a media invention.<\/p>\n<p>I mean, what do you do if the virus hits a team and knocks out a third of their roster?\u00a0 You can&#8217;t possibly ask them to keep playing with a bunch of minor leaguers.\u00a0 That clearly compromises the integrity of the season.\u00a0 Meanwhile, we already have players like our own\u00a0<strong>Ryan Zimmerman<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/mlb.nbcsports.com\/2020\/06\/26\/ryan-zimmerman-considering-sitting-out-the-2020-season\/\">make pretty cogent arguments<\/a> that they&#8217;re in really tough spots personally to expose themselves to three months of high-risk travel and group settings (If you&#8217;re Zimmerman, with an immuno-compromised parent and a small child at home &#8230; what would YOU do?)<\/p>\n<p>I dunno.\u00a0 I think its a frigging mess.\u00a0 As much as I like baseball and want a season to discuss and analyze, as much as I want to see\u00a0<strong>Max Scherzer<\/strong> vs\u00a0<strong>Gerritt Cole<\/strong> on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.masnsports.com\/byron-kerr\/2020\/06\/nats-to-open-against-the-yankees-in-prime-time.html\">opening day<\/a>\u00a0&#8230; part of me thinks we&#8217;re gonna get to mid-July and there&#8217;s going to be huge roadblocks to play.\u00a0 \u00a0We&#8217;ll see I suppose.<\/p>\n<p>When our 60-man roster is announced i&#8217;ll do another post to talk about it.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Post-publishing addition<\/strong>: I completely forgot to add in concerns\u00a0 about (some of which was mentioned in the comments):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>our foreign players actually being able to fly HERE<\/li>\n<li>our foreign players actually being allowed to fly home.<\/li>\n<li>state-based flying restrictions just announced.<\/li>\n<li>the fact that the DC mayor has apparently banned large gatherings and the Nats may not be able to train at home.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>just so many issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I alluded to this in comments on the previous thread&#8230;. but it is a question worth asking. Here&#8217;s the rough timeline for the 2020 season: Friday,\u00a0June 26: Transactions freeze ends at noon ET Sunday, June 28: Teams must submit 60-man player pool names by 3 p.m. ET Wednesday, July 1: Teams report to Training Camp [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[4280,1037,36,1016],"class_list":["post-16638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonnatsbaseball","category-natsgeneral","tag-gerritt-cole","tag-max-scherzer","tag-ryan-zimmerman","tag-todd-boss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16638"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16648,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16638\/revisions\/16648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}