Coronavirus

We’ve been learning quite a bit about Major League Baseball’s coronavirus plans involving players, whose relationships with the league are conditioned upon a collective bargaining agreement. But teams also employ quite a few other personnel under rather different terms.

It has not been clear to this point just how the league would handle non-uniformed employees. But the MLB commissioner’s office has acted to secure coordinated action on this front, per Jeff Passan of ESPN.com and Evan Drellich of The Athletic (Twitter link).

Every team has agreed to continue employing all non-player personnel in the regular fashion through the end of April. That will ensure steady paychecks for a large number of employees, though it’s worth remembering that not all workers associated with a ballclub and ballpark — say, vendors — are necessarily employed by the team. (The league has previously promised at least $30MM to ballpark workers — $1MM per team.. The Red Sox have boosted that amount, as Jason Mastrodonato of the Boston Herald tweets.)

The question remains: what’ll happen when the calendar flips to May? That isn’t known at present and will surely depend upon how the global coronavirus pandemic plays out. If baseball is ramping back up for play come that time, perhaps a broad loss of jobs can be forestalled altogether. Further coordination could take place at the league level, but it’s also possible teams will at some point be left to set their own courses.

We just wrapped up a series of posts regarding potential extension candidates, with part of the premise being that the ongoing MLB pause could afford opportunities for negotiations. But that won’t be possible under the terms of the Bob Nightengale of USA Today reports on Twitter.

It turns out that contract talks between teams and their own players will not be permitted while MLB rosters are frozen. Once a second Spring Training resumes, then further negotiations can take place.

In theory, there’s no impact to the likelihood of deals being struck. But in practice, this could make quite a difference. Added time and space without other business on the calendar might’ve helped. Perhaps the uncertainty of the global pandemic would’ve made some players more inclined to seek the safety of guaranteed salary — a factor that may have led the union to agree that talks shouldn’t be allowed.

Now that teams are precluded from further exploring deals, it may actually make it tougher to move past the finish line in situations where talks had already advanced during spring camp. After all, there will be myriad complex matters to sort out and innumerable distractions once the go-ahead is finally given for a ramp-up to the season. And there’ll be ample uncertainty of different kinds, creating a potential wrench for any talks.

Indication was, prior to the shutdown, that quite a few younger players had been targeted. But at this point, it’s tough to guess how many deals will end up being made.

It’s worth noting also that, per Nightengale, optional assignments can still occur until Saturday. In concert with yesterday’s flurry of options, it’s worth wondering just what the impact is. That will presumably be answered once the full details of the coronavirus adjustment agreement are known.

Generally, a player injured while on optional assignment will not earn service time while he is sidelined; whether that would have an impact in this case isn’t entirely clear. Likewise, the modifications to the collective bargaining agreement provide different payments to different classes of players, though it isn’t quite evident whether a late-breaking decision to option a player would change his earnings in the event the season isn’t played.

If Major League Baseball is indeed able to begin a season later this summer, teams are expected to be allowed 29-man rosters for the first month of the truncated campaign, per USA Today’s Bob Nightengale (Twitter link).

It’s a sensible temporary solution in light of the fact that clubs wouldn’t be afforded the traditional six-week run-up to the season that Spring Training provides. Permitting all 30 clubs to carry an extra three players — standard roster size was already slated to expand from 25 to 26 this season — will help clubs to manage pitcher workloads early in the year. And, with the expected addition of frequent doubleheaders, an extra player or two on the bench would allow managers to more easily rest regulars who are dealing with minor injuries or simply need a breather.

Whether the league would place any restrictions on the number of pitchers isn’t yet known, but clubs had previously been capped at a maximum of 13 pitchers. It’s also not clear whether a 30th player would be permissible on the day of a twin bill (as was the case in allowing a 26th man in previous seasons). The specifics of roster expansion and the format of a rebooted “spring” training are among the many items that still need to be hammered out even after MLB and the MLBPA reached an agreement on service time, player salaries and the 2020 draft last night.

Last month, when the New York Post’s Joel Sherman reported on the league’s exploration of an expanded playoff format, all indications were that the goal was for a 2022 implementation, should an agreement be reached with the MLBPA. Now, however, MLB Network’s Jon Heyman tweets that the league is at least considering a shift to a 14-team format in 2020, although he adds that “nothing [is] close to final” on this front. Increased revenue has always surely the primary goal of the proposition, but the shortened 2020 season has unsurprisingly heightened concerns about revenue.

The previously reported iteration of playoff expansion included first-round byes for the top team in each league, a televised event wherein the top teams that do not receive byes select their first-round opponents, and three-game series in the first round of play (as opposed to the current winner-take-all Wild Card games). Adopting that format — or some similarly structured permutation — this season would serve as a litmus test for the viability of that structure moving forward.

In theory, the playoff expansion would prove beneficial for clubs that were non-contenders in 2019 but invested heavily over the winter in an effort to return to the postseason hunt. The White Sox, Rangers, Angels, Diamondbacks and Reds, for instance, all improved considerably over the winter (and, in the Reds’ case, dating back to the 2019 trade deadline). None of that bunch has been regarded as a division favorite, but the addition of two new playoff slots in each league greatly improves their odds of capitalizing on those investments.

As with virtually everything pertaining to baseball at the moment, the potential implementation of an expanded postseason is far from a certainty. But with the two sides at least bracing for the possibility of playing games in empty stadiums (per Heyman), the revenue increase would become more crucial to owners and players alike. It seems inevitable that decreased revenues in 2020 will impact the extent to which clubs are willing to spend in free agency next winter, and recouping some of those dollars could help future market value to align more closely with what we saw in the 2019-20 offseason.

There’s no guarantee that an expanded playoff structure in 2020 would carry over into future seasons, but considering that it was already an agenda item for the league, it stands to reason that a 2020 rollout could have a lasting effect.

The lack of baseball on what should be Opening Day is palpable, almost tangible. Regional sports networks around the country are airing classic games for fans to re-live. Reporters are taking to social media to share their favorite Opening Day photos — can I interest you in a 1980s Ken Rosenthal, Tim Kurkjian and Richard Justice throwback? — as well as stories and memories from covering season openers. Jameson Taillon, Marcus Stroman and dozens of other players are also sharing past Opening Day moments and reaching out to fans at a time when we all pine for normalcy. #OpeningDayAtHome is trending on Twitter.

“Even though we are apart, we can come together,” says Mike Trout at the end of a poignant video package produced by Major League Baseball. It’s a sentiment that’s not only being articulated by the game’s best player in that clip but one that’s been embodied by players and teams throughout the game. As the COVID-19 pandemic has uprooted our daily routines, fundamentally changed the manner in which we socialize and brought to light the myriad elements of our lives that are far too easily taken for granted, the baseball community has endeavored to lend a helping hand in countless ways.

The California Strong Foundation, founded by Christian Yelich, Mike Moustakas, Ryan Braun and Rams quarterback Jared Goff, announced that it will be donating 100,000 meals to Feeding America. Jason Heyward donated $200,000 to a pair of Chicago-based charities, while teammate Anthony Rizzo’s foundation has expanded its Hope44 Meals initiative to provide hot meals for patients and staff at Chicago hospitals (fans can contribute donations as well). Cardinals outfielder Dexter Fowler is matching every dollar donated to Three Square Food Bank’s Coronavirus Emergency Fund, focusing on providing meals to children, seniors, veterans and furloughed workers. Freddie Freeman has contributed $125,000 to a trio of Atlanta charities.

Over in Pittsburgh, Pirates players took it upon themselves to support the local restaurant scene and support the city’s healthcare workers when buying 400 pizzas from local restaurants to feed the staff at Allegheny General Hospital. “We aren’t able to be up in Pittsburgh, but we wanted to let hospital workers on the front lines and local businesses that mean so much to our home city know that we’re thinking of them,” Taillon told Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “It was a no brainer from the players’ side.”

Recently retired players are stepping up, too. CC Sabathia’s charity is partnering with FreshDirect to donate boxes of food to children at the Boys & Girls Club in the Bronx. Dan Haren is auctioning off his collection of 300 bobbleheads and including a personalized note and anecdote pertaining to each player’s bobblehead; proceeds are being donated to the Children’s Action Alliance in Phoenix and to the Hollywood Food Coalition in Los Angeles — two charities to which Haren himself has already made sizable contributions in the wake of the pandemic. The Diamondbacks, White Sox, Athletics and others have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars each to various community initiatives.

The ways in which baseball has reached out to the community are too plentiful to list. (By all means, though, share additional acts of goodwill in the comments and on social media.) We all badly miss the crack of the bat, the pop of a fastball hitting the catcher’s mitt and the inherent drama of a pitcher protecting a one-run lead in the ninth inning. But at a time when it’s so easy to lament what we’re missing, we at MLBTR thought it pertinent to shine a light on the many, many ways that this game we all love and cherish can still make us feel good.

Baseball will be back — whether it’s this summer, this autumn or even sometime in 2021. But the manner in which the athletes and teams that we love to follow, cheer and jeer are stepping up around the country and the globe serve to remind that the sport has evolved into more than a simple game. It’s a community and a collective agent of positive change that can inspire others and make a difference even when games aren’t being played. Stay safe, baseball fans.