The Phillies last Friday announced that five players and three staff members — all of whom had been at their Clearwater, Fla. facility — had tested positive for the coronavirus. At the time of the announcement, the Phillies indicated that 32 more tests were still pending results. Of that bunch, two more players and two staff members also tested positive, the Phillies announced today, bringing their total to a dozen cases. One of today’s positive tests was from a player at “a location other than Clearwater.” The rest of those pending tests were negative.
Over the weekend, USA Today’s Bob Nightengale reported that 40 players and staff members throughout the league tested positive for the coronavirus just last week. These additional positive results from the Phillies appear to add to that total.
Word of the latest group of positive tests was announced as the MLBPA pores over the league’s health and safety protocols and prepares to offer a response within the next four hours. The league asked for a reply by 5pm ET today. The wave of positive tests throughout the sport won’t prevent the league from attempting to orchestrate a 60-game season, but the manner in which MLB and the Players Association are planning to both address and hopefully minimize positive results, to this point, is largely unknown.
Some of the precautions the league plans to take — daily temperature checks, testing multiple times per week, barring players from spitting, high-fiving, etc. — have come to light. However, the procedures that will be in place for positive tests when the inevitably do occur have been kept closer to the vest. Details on those protocols, crucial to the chances of playing out a 2020 season, figure to emerge late this afternoon and perhaps into tomorrow, depending on the MLBPA’s response to the league’s proposal.
But sure, let’s play ball!
PLAY BALL
Where’s the names????
Nothing to see here
By bye
Season shouldn’t happen
I’ll watch….you are under no obligation to.
This is how the padres win the World Series. Come on now keep the faith
There should be no playoffs in a “season” this shortened.
Manfredsajoke
You mean 1981 should have been cancelled?
Agreed. Any season this short will always come with an * as far as championships go. Even if my team wins, I still won’t be boasting about it. I’ll still feel like we didn’t really earn it
Don’t get me wrong, I’m super excited to watch some Major League Baseball! Just don’t think it’s worth calling a true season, much less naming anyone “champs”.
Why not ? Because people like you are too afraid of a 99% survival rate ?
So a 99% survival rate is a good thing?
That was the survival rate of the Spanish flu.
Who is better hitter. A player who has a 1000 OPS+ or a player who has a 900 OPS+.
You can’t answer that question until you know how many ABs each of them had.
One percent death rate for a contagious virus is a lot worse than ebola.
Ebola. The disease that destroys your organs by making you bleed uncontrollably… Sure, you tell yourself COVID is worse than that.
The point is that you have to look at how easy it is to catch the disease. If 50% of the population catches convid, a 99% survival rate results in 1.6 million dead Americans.
How many Americans died of Ebola.
Use your brain.
Because it hasn’t ever had a massive outbreak here, knock on wood. If there was an Ebola outbreak in America you wouldn’t be allowed to leave your house for a very long time and sports wouldn’t happen for years. You need to do research on what Ebola os of you seriously think Corona is worse. If you got Ebola, you would be wishing you only had COVID
99.6% overall, 99.99% for those under 40yrs old.
M Haworth
You are making up stats because no one knows.
And right there is why it took so long.
The players wanted 100% for all 60 games scheduled, not just played.
I don’t blame the players (or the owners) for wanting more for their side, but with all this uncertainty, there was never going to be more than 60 games and there was never going to be guarantees of pay for games not played and the players were never going to settle for less than 100% of their prorated salary.
When did we get to the point where a positive ‘case’ is equivalent to death. Who cares, how many times have you heard during a hockey season or something where “a bug is going around the locker room”. Play ball, theyre big boys.
There was measles in hockey and no one batted an eye
Well there is the whole thing about there being a measles vaccine.
They still didn’t shut down when one player caught it
Nowhere did I (or anyone) imply that a positive case is death. Everyone knows the opposite to be overwhelmingly likely. But to act like the potential for the mass spread of this through the league is something that can simply be overlooked is senseless as well. A “bug” going through the locker room in a normal sports setting might knock guys out for a couple of days.
Even younger, healthy coronavirus patients at times have taken weeks to recover, though, and those who remain minimally affected or even asymptomatic will still be out of action longer than for a “bug” as they isolate and await negative testing to return to the clubhouse.
And none of that even acknowledges coaching staffs — which, while they’ve grown increasingly youthful still have plenty of elder members — or the families of players.
Even with a recovery rate around 99% to be expected among these athletes — again, that does not mean an easy recovery — it shouldn’t be hard to see why there’s concern about hundreds of cases popping up throughout the league.
Who is this and what have you done with Steve Adams?
Well said!!!!!!! You are 100% correct.
i wasnt replying to your article specifically stevie boy. it was a general comment about the fear mongering and spike in news stories about “positive cases” among athletes and the general populace. But thanks for your article, I look forward to the update in 2021 where they have suspended next season because of the 666th wave of coronavirus
I sense a little frustration Steve, and you are correct. Good for you.
This “bug” is different.
My brother, a long-distance runner now into his 40s, got it. A mild case, supposedly. Fever, headache, and a dry cough for a couple of days. That was a little over six weeks ago.
Now? Can’t walk a city block without stopping. And that doesn’t seem to be improving. Who really knows what additional complications may arise from getting this? It doesn’t have to kill you ….
Even if this was stratomatic baseball and these were paper players, you’d still be concerned with the spread and how much time each player is going to miss.
It’s not going to be days. It’s going to be three to four weeks, and that’s if it is a mild case.
Sorry…that’s called bad luck. Move on.
There are differences but many people who test positive for COVID are asymptomatic and it has no impact on them at all. Some players who get it might be out a month while others might not feel a thing. They’ll likely still be held out so they don’t spread COVID, of course.
Baseball could cancel the season because some players will get sick but Korea and Japan are going on even knowing that.
In Japan and Korea they are isolating the players from the general population. That is never going to happen here, even though the degree of community spread is much greater here. I think we can guess pretty safely how this will play out.
Kodian I heard a story that was the opposite of what you explained. There was this old man that was twice that guy’s age and was 80 and used to walk many blocks and contracted the virus and now he runs the blocks
Russian Roulette isn’t guaranteed to be fatal eiither, but what sane person wants to take that chance?
It’s not about taking a chance for yourself nor if you are sane or not Apachelion. The bottom line is everyone should try their best to avoid catching this virus because of other people and not just for themselves sake. People may think they’re young and strong and would be able to fight off this virus but they need to realize they may kill Grandpa. And that’s what they have to focus on. Everyone has to understand that you have to stay away from catching this so you can be around the week and the old and not potentially kill them.
To compare this virus to Russian Roulette is absolutely ridiculous. I do believe that this virus is real and there are precautions that need to be taken. RR is played with a 1 in 6 chance of death. To equate with the virus, you would first have to be in the correct room…out of dozens of rooms. Then, if you happened to be in the room with the gun, it had one bullet with 99 empty chambers…. Come on now.
May the best immune system win
And my guess is that none of them have any symptoms. They test positive, but are not sick.
Cubfever you may be right
I have to assume that if they felt sick they wouldn’t have been in the training facilities. Right?
Subset of the general population. Sooner or later everyone will have been exposed to it. Some will test positive depending on when they get tested others won’t. Some will get sick. The vast majority will live. Get on with life people.
Far from the truth. Not everyone will be exposed to it, even if you live in the hub of the virus. i do think a season should be held, and i wanted 75 games, but don’t exaggerate it either.
So, basically what you are saying is…
People being able to live how they want, make their own career choices and do what’s best for themselves economically is more important than each and every human life surviving?
Call it the “Pro Choice” side of the argument.
And there he is again. Your kiss ass liberal reporter Steve Adams throwing out his go along with the media scare tactics when none of his reports mean a damn thing. These players and staff aren’t sick at all. Take your skirt off Steve. Play Ball!
I’m a conservative. Steve Adams is 100% right.
Let me ask you a question. How much time is a player going to miss if he gets this virus?
14 days minimum to quarantine.
The biggest issue isn’t ballplayers dying because that’s very very unlikely. It’s that enough players on a team get it that their lineup is AAA guys for two weeks. In a 60 game season the playoff teams might be clubs that aren’t that good but just didn’t get sick.
It’s 14 day quarantine if they don’t have it are just exposed.
From a positive test, to back on the field. It’s probably closer to twice that.
It’s not highly unlikely. Some Ppayers have underlying conditions and don’t know it.
Carlos Carrasco found out he had cancer last year. If he had gotten this last year, he could very easily be dead.
Twice that equals almost half the season. 2 or 3 good players on a few teams will have major impacts on the results., let alone 6-8.
Gigorilla
Oh my god.. someone gets it.
If a player gets the normal flu in 2019, you can expect him to miss 1% of the season.
If a player gets this virus in 2020, you can expect him to miss 30% to 50%. of the season.
I’m really not sure why that is so difficult to comprehend.
What do politics have anything to do with this topic? Rational people want to reduce their chances of getting the virus, and aren’t so intensely desperate to see a game that they’re wanting them to go on at all costs. Rational people also realize this isn’t some type of hoax. People don’t lose their lives to hoaxes.
Appalachian_Outlaw
Politics should have nothing to do with this topic.
I find myself disagreeing with both sides. Many on the right wont wear a mask and think it’s just a bad flu. The left thinks everything should be shut down and don’t understand who gets this is more important than how many get this.
I find myself disagreeing with both sides on this. It’s insanely serious, but we have to open things up but we also have to be smart. That includes wearing a mask.
Halo11Fan
“The left thinks everything should be shut down…”
That is just plain incorrect. Everybody wants the economy to get back to normal because people are suffering from unemployment, food insecurity, and isolation. Nobody wants that. What the democrats do want is a reopening of the economy that is done intelligently. Big gatherings without face masks is not intelligent. Open up, but do it slowly with face masks and social distancing.
People are making more money on unemployment because of the Federal Governments addition to it than they were making while working. Many are not returning when being called to come back to work.
and the solution to that is simple. The “jilted” employer simply calls their DOL and gives the name of the employee who refused ro return, and the benefits stop. It is just not that hard.
Caller ID Is An Amazing Thing.
For all the lack of ‘sensational news’ coverage because its not NY, it was reported yesterday that Arizona has passed 85% occupancy of both inpatient and ICU hospital beds due to the surging infection rate.
But sure, business as normal right?
Don’t bother to ask how low it is in other states….it’s astonishingly low. But go ahead and cherry pick.
Last I checked the Diamondbacks still played in Arizona, but feel free to bury facts that don’t support your position.
People dismiss data because it doesn’t fit their agenda.
If Phoenix has reached 85% occupancy, it’s a big deal. Not just for Phoenix but for the entire country.
@Halo…
amp.azcentral.com/amp/3242113001
And… add to that how are things in florida?
Where are spring training and fall league sites?
Where are the “alternate” playing sites again? Oh, I hear Texas is seeing an upswing as well.
Just because your neighborhood isn’t having as big an issues doesn’t mean it wont. Just because you don’t believe it is an issue for anyone doesn’t mean it isnt.
Finally, when you run out of beds to treat and isolate the sick, what happens? Who decides the triage? Will you agree to pre-emptive self euthanization at a certain age since those lives don’t have enough value to you?
AtlSoxFan
I’m not nearly as concerned about how many people get this vs how many are hospitalized, how many are in ICU and how many die.
Who gets this is more important than how many.
twentyforty:
Eight states in the last week have a more than 50% increase in cases, with increase between 10-50% in 17 others. That’s half the states. Only 13 states are showing declines. The rate of infection is increasing nationwide. To say that it’s low in other states appears to be the real cherry-picking.
AZ news report — apnews.com/141d2710cf830b1718b00c5b24da4ae8
Do you realize the average hospital occupancy before covid was 76%?
In fact, most hospitals prefer to be at 85-90% capacity since the days of non-profit healthcare is all but gone.
Google it.
Babe Ruth contracted the Spanish Flue twice in 1918. Just saying.
Average age of Covid death in PA is 80.
Once as a hitter and once as a pitcher. He was Hall of Fame quality as both.
I’m offended for you that I’m the first thumbs up. This is an excellent joke.
Agreed, criminally underrated comment.
I live in PA, pretty sure the average age period is 80. Second oldest state after FL.
Also, the Spanish Flue could have been avoided with better chimney design.
I’m pretty sure both are wrong because the first is a statistical impossibility and the other is weird science.
This season should be canceled. It sucks but it is what it is… how much fun is it gonna be when, mid-season, some coach, or player or family member ends up in a hospital bed over this or worse? How will we feel then? They should just “get together” and prepare for next year.
This is so stupid. Media loves stoking the fire. 99% survival rate with no underlying conditions and we are acting like this is the bubonic plague. Seriously. Media. stay the hell out of everyone’s business
How much is a half baseball season worth to you? Would you be ok if “only” one or two older coaches die? What if your team wins the World Series? Could we push the value to 3 coaches and a couple of dead relatives? What price is worth it?
How many games is one living soul worth in todays society?
From an article on the MLB website, also previously reported here —
“Players who returned to their home country during the shutdown — Hyun-Jin Ryu is in South Korea, for example — won’t have to jump through immigration hoops. Furthermore, Tim Brown of Yahoo Sports reports players returning from overseas won’t have to quarantine for two weeks as recommended by the CDC.”
What could go wrong?
Players want to play. No one is being forced to play; in fact ANY player can choose to opt out of the season entirely if they feel the risks aren’t worth it. So we have willing participants who want to get back to work and the teams / league will do all they can to try and make it as safe as possible. There’s no question that there will be some positive cases (hopefully none too serious), but if the players want to take the risk and there is a good health protocol in place to limit the spread of the virus, who are we to say the season should be cancelled? We all risk infection every day we leave the house. Let’s allow these guys to get back to work, provide us with some much needed entertainment and allow the medical experts to do all they can to make this as safe as possible for everyone. No one is being forced to work against their will. Let’s hope they can get the full 60 game schedule in and full playoffs too. It would great for American morale if this can happen.
Correct, but here at Trade Rumors I have read many posts, Some very inconsiderate .
My question is, in todays society, what is the value of one humans life? People would rather watch a Baseball Game & feel satisfied, and then if someone dies, well he volunteered to play, he was not forced into it.
The chance is slim, but still there. I work in for a Grocery Chain & have put my 40 hours in every week through this & I’m going on 63. At Least Three employees have gotten sick at our small store, as far as I know, they were all young & recovered. But hey, we all have to eat, Right?
Again, what is a living soul worth these days?
You know, if the Cubs hadn’t won the World Series a few years ago, this would’ve been the perfect scenario for them to break the curse. A season of epic proportions sees the most epic of finishes.
If I am not mistaken, COVID-19 has killed 0.0003% of the population. However, does anyone know the percentage of people that COVID-19 has killed out of the people who have tested positive?
Yes, it is less then that % you posted throwinch
Seems to hover right around 5%, just compare the positive tests minus the active cases for thr state, and the deaths.
In Michigan the Death Rate is 9%
6097÷ 67,957=0.0897
It is impossible to talk about mortality rates without understanding the basic terminology. Case Fatality Rate is the one we hear the most but it is fundamentally meaningless because it only includes diagnosed and treated cases. Basically only the sickest patients are being counted in CFR. The real mortality rate in the general population is probably around 0.25%. This means a total number of deaths in the 600,000 to 800,000 range if this virus plays out without a vaccine.
Can’t happen? Guess again. The U.S. is less than 5% of the world’s population but has logged more then 25% of the world’s deaths. Those numbers should sober up a blind drunk, or so we’d hope.
I can’t bear to see a 413ROVRPD comment on here.
Just as bad as Casey’s Partner. We never found out who his partner was.
I think I give people too much credit,always surprised by how many stupid people are out there.
No! Your not accurate. There are not as many stupid people out there. It’s simply because there’s not many smart people out there. I remember a famous philosopher was asked what is wrong with people these days. His quote was awesome for me “people just simply don’t think”