Commissioner Rob Manfred met with Tony Clark of the Players’ Union to discuss many of the potential issues sure to arise as a result of the coronavirus shutdown. Though many particulars of the 2020 season are being taken into consideration, no decision is expected in the near-term about the official start to the 2020 season. That said, the delay is expected to continue until May at the earliest, per Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich of The Athletic. Still, no official announcement has been made, nor is there likely to be any official decisions made until enough time has passed to better quantify containment of the virus.
In the meantime, the Commissioner’s office is working with Clark and the MLBPA to hammer out a number of issues, including player pay. A delayed season, of course, brings all manner of complication. A truncated season, however, takes those complications to the next level, specifically in regards to service time and how it affects player salaries.
There was some concern that if players left their spring facilities, the MLB would be in a better position to suspend their pay, though those concerns appear to be, per Rosenthal and Drellich, “ill-formed.” The more pertinent question, for now, asks what is the safest route to moving forward and preparing for the eventual 2020 season? Opinions are split right now about whether players are better served staying in camp with their clubs and all the resources, medical and otherwise, at their disposal therein, or whether players should take part in the the broadly-accepted strategy of social distancing. For now, teams and players continue to make their decisions on an individual basis.
Is anyone else on iphones not getting notifications from the TradeRumors app anymore?
Delete the app and reinstall it. Same thing happened to my phone a while back.
Thanks, have done that so many times this week already though.
My app is always somewhat janky but I can’t complain since it’s free. I check a couple of times a day anyway.
The app is garbage.
Agreed, I just use chrome and check a few time a day.
Use ur phone browser.
Dont have the iph1. I have an android. Didnt know there was an app
Pay the Minor Leaguers while you’re at it
I think the Astros are behind this. A distraction from their wrong doing.
You must not have a happy life. Ignorant comments like that.
I’m okay with any delay if it is for the greater good of all fans
Ever hear of sarcasm? Must be a miserable Trashtro fan.
I do know sarcasm, I’m a Rangers fan. Just don’t understand why almost every thread has to trash the Astros. Go down to Wal Mart and pick yourself a life.
Username checks out
Is that where you bought your cheap life?
I believe he was joking
It’s a joke or a d!ck don’t take so don’t take it so hard.
AAJ: dont defend stupid people please. It was a stupid original comment, period.
Tom’s statement is true. The virus has taken away alot of heat away from the Astros. Why do you assume he’s a Astros fan.? Just common sense thinking.
Yup, you need to reinstall the Irony drive on your computer. It clearly isn’t functioning.
no suprise there, honestly I’d be happy if it started before July
really? “ill-formed?” they just stopped things. give them a bit more time to formulate their plan before you call them out on it. these guys know their only outlets for a story now are to criticize the league’s response to this issue, and they’ll surely make a big deal out of wherever they like to make such a story.
I believe “ill-formed” referred to “concerns” that MLB would suspend player pay
Ridiculous
^^ well thought out comment.
Do I need to cancel my monthly mlbtv subscription?
There will be baseball eventually. If the break goes far into the season, I expect the MLB will issue partial refunds.
There is no MLB baseball, so who cares about the app?!
Shelter in place until May.
So where is Tom Brady going to play?
Hopefully with the Cubs so your day job of trolling isn’t impacted by this situation. What on earth are you going to do without any Cubs news the next few weeks?
It would to “sick” if they decided to look at this as positive for mlb to capitalize on.
Alternative idea: restructure the schedule with many double headers in order to play all 162 games. In order to do that, for 1 year, and 1 year only, 40 man rosters all year long.
Positive: all 162 games played, many long fun days at the ball park for fans (make it events!), and opportunities created for 14 other players per team to produce and remain big leaguers. Capitalize on the public returning to normalcy.
Negative: need to pay the players league mine which would be like an 8mil investment per team. (In the grand scheme of things, it’s a drop in the bucket for the good of the game).
What are your opinions of what mlb should do?
If I’m a minor league guy, I’m staying in camp to take advantage of the club’s resources. Who cares what the guys making a half mill plus per year do?
Start the season one month later. Utilize doubleheaders to get in a 150-game regular season. Full pay. Rosters are frozen. No service time adjustments needed. Why keep adding more complications to an already complicated situation? Just more over-reaction, if you ask me.
They’re just going to pick up a new start up date and go from there. Maybe 4 or 5 day night DH’s with their division rivals. I think waiting until May is a stretch. IMHO is everyone is over reacting. Thank you media.
Thank you. Finally someone gets it.
Players on the 40 man already make the MLB minimum…ever if they are in the minor leagues.
Play normal schedule when opening in May, players get prorated salaries.
I dont think the owners cant pay pro rated salaries. The players are paid the same salary no matter how many games are the schedule.
Not accurate. There’s a clause in the rulebook that allows for the commissioner to suspend salaries in the event of a work stoppage due to a national emergency.
https://clutchpoints.com/mlb-news-national-emergency-declaration-allows-league-to-suspend-contracts/
There is no way any of the 2020 season is going to happen. I love baseball but two months off and back to spreading the virus makes no sense.
Nothing like speculating with 10% of the facts, idiot.
Are you kidding me??? No wonder you refer to yourself as clepto… mark my words on this!
You are complete and total moron Nick. YOU are part of the problem.
We are in the infancy stages of a pandemic with conditions growing worse by the day. You somehow think Mlb is going to March 40k fans rubbing elbows and sneezing on eachother !!!! What’s the matter with you?? Take the baseball out of your rear end stupidness.
Whats the matter with me? Well lets see….
I am rational, see reality for what it is, have a brain and use common sense.
Now lets analyze you: exact opposite, and add you on a panic monger and an idiot, on top of it.
“Mark my words”….no. i didnt. your words are just panic inducers. Nice try.
I want a beer with Clepto
Not a chance in this universe they cancel the season over this. Swine flu was worse but not one game was cancelled. Its almost as if social media wasn’t as advanced back then……
They will resume season right after the MLB ASG.
Swine flu had a death rate of 0.02%, how was it worse?
That said, I agree…there’s no way MLB cancels the entire season.
MLB should be using the down time to draw up several schedule options of varying amounts of games–which are equitable to all teams–that can be implemented immediately upon resumption of the season.
The only question is are we playing a 125 game season or playing until December?
unless we get a whole bunch of day/night double headers. but I dont see that.
I don’t know how they plan to fit a 162 game schedule in if it is pushed back that far. Double headers? Play until December? No off days (yeah right). I notce playing in empty stadiums hasn’t been floated much.. must be too much revenue lost without fans in the seats.
It’s not about the fans, the players will be touching the same balls, and other equipment
they’ll subtract games, there’s no way they’re going to play 162 games
If I had to guess maybe they redo the schedule and eliminate interleague games.
Probably wont, but, that’d make the most sense
We would be lucky if the season started June 01. Going to be a shortened season, my guess 110games? Yankees sure benefit to allow their players to heal.
It’s always about the Yankees isnt it,
No baseball, no basketball, no toilet paper, no paper towels, no sanitary wipes.
DAMN THE CORONAVIRUS TO HELL!!!!
They not going to play at all
wonder if they’ll change the schedule up if they actually start the season? I have Cubs at Blue Jay’s tickets in August, I wonder what the chances of that game actually happening is? you’d think they’d prioritize league games and more importantly division games. honestly they should have zero interleague games IMO
According to Rick Hahn’s recent interview, “Handling the starting pitchers, ramping down and back up again is the tricky part of this.” It’s unsure what amount of time is necessary to get those starters prepared properly, and it may require having a 6th or 7th starter working in a rotation until everyone gets on track.
Fine with me. I have MLB The Show.
I’ll get into the pool and bet on June 15…..Thinking it will be any sooner is underestimating the needed response to the virus….Practice starts June 1, games middle of the month…..pay and service time issues will be fascinating, and probably reverberate in the forthcoming CBA negotiations….which probably means, owners will cave everywhere…..
Oh cool, June 15—-just in time for the Cubs and Cardinals to go to London!
that ain’t happening, they’ll move it to the states
Bob, that estimate balances optimism and realism. Thank you for that!
Why can’t they play in an empty ballpark?
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Boom
Not safe
I can’t believe people are falling for this, that coronavirus is a hoax. Walmart is probably the one that started this. I went to Walmart yesterday and there wasn’t any product on the shelf’s, it was bought up by the frantic imbeciles, so Wallmart made a lot of money and these companies who fill their shelves up making bank my man!
it’s only a hoax if you haven’t had it.
Tell me how Walmart started this. I’m curious.
You are a font of disinformation.
So the person who died in my hospital yesterday from covid-19 was all part of a conspiracy theory?
It’s “shelves”!
Duh
It seems that the poster thought that each shelf owned it’s contents.
Every single grocery store is making money off of this.
Yes ry.the.stunner. I have been telling all these other goats here but they are stupidly interested in spelling.
rotating schedule. coin flip determines who plays at home first. each team plays three game series with the team located closest to them, in the other league. national league teams rotate to next closest team going clockwise. american league goes counterclockwise. once the rotation is completed, reverse the pattern.
wouldn’t in be cool to see st louis and the yankees play in fenway.
Pump the brakes buddy. You know how long it takes to set up that Cluster F*ck you just proposed.lay off the weed too. Rotate and and then go in reverse.?
Your name says it all, troll. Sad to see you put time into your post.
wouldn’t take long to make the schedule, take me three hours, maybe less.
stirthepot was already taken
Zero chance of 162 games, move past that idea.
Lucky to get a half season in, probably no audience.
This is months, not weeks.
lol this is not months, at all, but I’d love to know where you got your medical degree and where you’ve spent time studying this virus to come to that conclusion. Granted, I haven’t either, but if you look at China, this started in December. It’s been going on so long there because, like ALL of the EU and UK countries that currently have ths virus, it’s COLD. there.
Here in the US, it’s been unseasonably warm in a lot of places and we aren’t seeing it spread even half as quickly as it did or is in cold climates. China is already on the back end of this and coming out the other side, but if you look at WARM climates – the tropics, places like Jamacia, Barbados, Aruba, The Bahamas etc – anyone who has the virus in these places contraced it in cold weather and was already infected when they arrived in these countries.
I’ve seen several reports from researches who claim the virus isn’t heat-resistant and will die off when termperatures each 80F. That’ll be next month in a lot of places, and this will be over.
My dad had a PhD in Biochemistry from MIT and then a fellowship at Harvard Med. I am only a fully credentialed actuary, so I’m not half as smart as he was, but I do know a thing or two about predicting the future. Granted it’s all about risk and it’s commensurate cost but I also have a pretty good skill for interpreting data. Just scratching the surface on this won’t give us the answers. I hope it is short and you’re right, but I have a different feeling about this.
You know nothing about predicting the future because it’s impossible.
I didn’t say the predictions are right, but actuaries do predict outcomes.
Eloy will still hit 50 HRs even if they shorten the season!
his name isn’t allriseforthedoctor
All of this is overreaction. Sports should have never been cancelled. No one is getting this virus. It’s just small amounts of people just like any other virus. There’s not even a vaccine for the flu. Stop all of this nonsense and bring back sports!
Glad we have a CDC expert in our midst. Or is it just some armchair fraud practicing medicine without a license?
frank costanza………Is that you Rudy Gobert?
The only thing that spreads faster than the virus is disinformation about it.
Classic inane word salad.
The airing of grievances has started quite early this year.
If Drellich is attached to this it’s tough to believe.
Bob Nutting must be squirming in his seat right now. He actually has to pay players and won’t be able to pocket additional money. Bummer
The Rover is plowing out a field on Mars. When it’s ready the games will start. They just have to change the ball a little bit. The fake ball would reach Jupiter.
I’m still waiting for that email from MLB informing me that I will be receiving a partial refund on my mlb.TV Premium streaming package.
Don’t hold your breath. Or do, so you don’t catch Coronavirus.
You won’t.
I how late is too late to start the season? If you start in June, you are down to about a 100 game season. Later than that and, well, what’s the point?
From talking with players and major and minor league coaches that are part of camps I teach at, well camps I won’t be teaching at this spring since they were cancelled, they are being told by MLB and the MLBPA to be ready to resume spring training on Friday April 10th for a period 10 days. As of now, they have been told that games during that period will likely be played without fans in the stands. That puts the start of the regular season around April 22nd.
Of course, all of that is subject to change if the situation with the coronavirus changes. The first MLB player or coach that tests positive is going to completely change the thinking about this.
I hope this is true. I spent alot of money for great seats at Coors Field
My friend who works in the commissioner’s office says that you’re wrong and that the regular season won’t start until June.
I’m not concerned about the major league players’ salaries. The minor leaguers and the hourly stadium workers are in trouble.
The Billionaires who own these teams need to guarantee pay during the shutdown. Most will have no alternative for finding work.
And if the billionaires are too cheap, the richest players should step in.
I was very pleased that Mark Cuban immediately made this move.
At this point, I would be happy if we had A season. Shortened or otherwise. If this thing gets out of control across the US, we can kiss the season goodbye! We literally have no other way of preventing the spread of this virus other than social distancing. There’s no vaccine, no medications to stop the spread. We are are as vulnerable to this as we can be. As much as I love baseball, the smart thing to do is to heed every precaution within our means!
This sucks. They better start before May. That’s 6 weeks no 2 weeks. I have tix in may for Rockies and Reds
Yeah, who’d want to miss that thrilling matchup.
I don’t even care whose playing I’m a Cubs fan but they dont go to Denver til Sept wherr I have other plans.
All I want is for the season to start before May 8th.
Yes I can smell all of your sarcasm. Thanks