Baseball's Possible Plan to Hold a Season During this Crisis

Major League Baseball has been reported to be considering a unique plan to start the baseball season as early as May.  Multiple media outlets report that MLB is considering starting the major league season with all thirty teams playing in Arizona, essentially contained in an isolated bubble.  Should the plan be implemented, the league would restrict travel of all personnel from the hotel to the stadiums and back.  There would be no fans in the stands.  The players would not crowd together in the dug-out, but sit in the stands at least six feet apart when not on the field playing.

Executing this plan would also require several changes to the way baseball is currently played.  There would be an electronic strike zone, for example, to eliminate the need for an umpire to peer over the shoulder of the catcher at home plate.  The automatic strike zone was tested in 2019 in the Arizona Fall League to mix reviews.  Commissioner Rob Manfred had planned on testing it further in the minor leagues in 2020.

The league would also prohibit all mound visits.  Plus, in order to fit in a full 162 game schedule, there would be seven innings double-headers.

As an enticement to fans, there would be greater use of microphones on the players in the field.

MLB may be focusing on Arizona because of the close proximity of multiple baseball facilities.  There are ten major league spring training facilities in Maricopa County.  Additionally, Phoenix houses the Arizona Diamondbacks' hone stadium, Chase Field, as well as Phoenix Municipal Stadium, where the Oakland Athletics used to play spring training games, and Arizona State University currently plays its home games.  All of these facilities are within a fifty mile radius.  Tuscon houses two additional facilities, which are only ninety miles away.  This makes Arizona a preferred location for this type of plan, as compared to Florida, where spring training facilities can be hundreds of miles apart.  Moreover, while Arizona has not yet been hit as hard by the Coronavirus as Florida.

Why should baseball consider something as trivial as starting the baseball season while we are in the middle of a pandemic requiring many in the country, if not the world, to stay isolated and engage in social distancing?  For one, the isolation has been difficult psychologically on people.  Being forced to stay away physically from many of the people we care for takes its toll.  Entertainment options are limited.  No new movies or television shows are being made right now.  Indeed, the world has had to be content with watching a reality show about crazy people who own and raise tigers, and want to kill each other as a diversion from the droll of everyday life.  Even that has a limited run of seven episodes.  Sooner or later, we are going to run out of options available on Disney+.

Sure, baseball fans can re-watch past games which are being made available through the MLB website, or even by various independent YouTube channels.  While I may enjoy a trip through the Wayback Machine to see Steve Carlton's devastating slider again, the fact is those games have already been played.  The mystery of who is going to stand up and shine in order to win the 1980 World Series is just not there.  Watching old games may be satiating for now, but they just do not possess the excitement of watching a live game.

For both team owners and players, one motivation is money.  Owners are not making money if no games are being played.  Most of them are anxious to generate some kind of revenue for the season.  Indeed, baseball generates about $11 billion each year.

However, Bob Nightengale of USA Today reports that at least two owners are resistant to such a plan.  It would forgo revenue sources as the naming rights of the stadiums, ticket sales and stadium concession, which reportedly account for about $4 million of baseball's annual revenue.

If revenue is expected to decline, it is questionable whether the players' union would give the owners concessions, considering the multi-million dollar contracts held by some of the most popular players.  On that note, earning something may still be better than nothing, as the owners paid the players $170 million to cover the salaries of the forty man rosters of each team through May.  It was understood that if there was no season, that was all that the owners would pay the players.

Officials from the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institute of Health and the Department of Health and Human Services are supportive of the plan, so long as the necessary personnel, which would include not only players, but coaches, umpires, broadcasters, support staff and others, adhere to isolation, and observe strict social distancing.  Some believe that this could be an opportunity to put on display the type of social distancing that would be required if the nation's economy is to be restarted.

But the plan has its detractors.  Some argue that opening the season in fashion would be irresponsible due to the shortage of tests and other resources available to health care workers.  Even MLB has stated that it does not want to drain such resources from the healthcare workers fighting the pandemic in the front lines.  Ken Rosenthal notes that each team already employs its own physicians, and hypothesizes that wide-spread testing should be available by the time that baseball is ready to put such a plan into action.

Additionally, Arizona experiences hot summers.  Temperatures can reach 104 degrees or more in the height of the day.  Only one facility, Chase Field, has a retractable dome.  This means that many games would have to be played in the evenings in Arizona, which would mean late nights for fans of East Coast teams.

The plan would require the cooperation of the Department of State as well, as many international players would need to be recalled from their homes in places like Japan and Latin America.

Other issues the plan raises concern the health of the players on the field.  While baseball has the least amount of contact of the major sports, there may still be contact among players, such as collisions along the base path.  Players may get injured while diving for balls. 

One proposal to address this has been to greatly expand the team's rosters while playing in isolation.  Some have floated the idea that each team could have all players on its forty man roster available to play.  Ken Rosenthal has posited that rosters may be expanded to as many as fifty players per team.  While that may provide a contingency for injuries, it also complicates the logistics of keeping so many people in isolation.

There are still additional obstacles to implementing a plan like this.  Would players be willing to stay isolated from their families for four months while the season plays out?  This could be especially hard for players whose wives are expecting such as Garrett Cole and Mike Trout.  If the plan were to permit the players' families to live with them in the hotels, that would greatly increase the number of people to be placed in this bubble to the thousands.  That would complicate matters, to say the least.  Hospitality staff would likely be asked to remain in isolation as well, possibly living in the hotel and wearing protective gear while serving MLB personnel.

The plan also provides an opportunity for greater experimentation for baseball.  The electronic strike zone and seven inning double-headers are just two possibilities.  MLB could also take this opportunity to have National League teams play with the designated hitter, a goal Rob Manfred has expressed in the past.  Other issues to consider are whether the statistics would count as usual.  If seven inning double-headers become the norm, would a statistic such as strike-outs per nine innings continue to make sense?

Baseball is not committing publicly to any specific plan at the moment.  The league is keeping its options open, with the understanding that the situation on the ground is moving fast, and things can change every day.

Nonetheless. baseball could inspire confidence in the American people that if we just adhere to the CDC's recommendations for a few months, everything will eventually return to normal.

By:  William J. Kovatch, Jr.

Check out our YouTube Channel at: YouTube.com/c/PhiladelphiaBaseballHistory

You can also find us on Twitter, @PhilBaseballHis, and Instagram.

References

Arizona Sports, "MLB pumps brakes on discussed plan to play all games in Arizona," (April 7, 2020).

Bloom, Barry M., "MLB Plan to Play in Arizona May Be Only Way to Save a Season Delayed by Coronavirus," Forbes (April 7, 2020).

Mayo, Jonathan, "Robo-umps?  Here's what AFL players, coaches say," MLB.com (Octoer 29, 2019).

Nightengale, Bob, "Opinion: MLB's crazy Arizona plan could have terrible consequences," USA Today (April 7, 2020).

Norris, Josh, "Automated Strike Zone Wiffs at Arizona Fall League," Baseball America (November 3, 2019).

Passen, Jeff, "Sources: MLB, union focused on plan that could allow season to start as early as May in Arizona," ESPN (April 7, 2020).

Perry, David, "Coronavirus: MLB, MLPA discuss starting 2020 season as soon as May with all games in Arizona, per reports," CBS Sports (April 7, 2020).

Rosenthal, Ken, "Some in government support plan for baseball's return; obstacles remain," The Athletic (April 7, 2020) (paid subscription).

Sheinin, David, "Baseball exploring May/June return with players and other personnel isolated in Arizona," The Washington Post (April 7, 2020).

Sherman, Joel, "How MLB's suspect coronavirus return idea got to this point," New York Post (April 7, 2020).

Sherman, Joel, "MLB's Arizona restart vision fraught with logistical nightmares," New York Post (April 7, 2020).

West, Jenna, "Report: Automated Strike Zone Coming to Minor League Baseball in 2020," Sports Illustrated (November 5, 2019).