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There was a lot of news yesterday about baseball and really, none of it was good.
First, there came the report that the player’s union offer of playing a 70 game season was rejected by the owners and that there would be no more negotiating anymore, meaning that a 60 game season is coming. This isn’t really speculation, as the union tweeted it out:
The Major League Baseball Players Association today released the following statement: pic.twitter.com/XxRDSskBBT
— MLBPA Communications (@MLBPA_News) June 19, 2020
This is getting quite ridiculous. Very simply: the owners, however many there are that are stonewalling this, don’t want to pay the difference between 60 and 70 games. While we don’t know the entirety of the player’s offer, it seems that by ending discussions and, possibly by Monday, instituting a schedule, they are going to cost themselves a lot more money.
Simply amazing that if Manfred has to unilaterally impose the season because there are 8 or more owners that won’t addess ~$5M ea, they lose postseason expanded gms on TV; lose uni patch, and more importantly; stare down losing ~$33.33M ea if they lose a grievance. Crazy
— Maury Brown (@BizballMaury) June 20, 2020
Hilarious. Absolutely stunning that there aren’t owners that can see how stupid they are being as a group.
However, even if they do reach some sort of agreement on how many games they are going to play, there is just one eensy, weensy little problem out there that they can’t solve or throw money at.
THE CORONAVIRUS IS STILL CAUSING HAVOC IN THE COUNTRY!!!!!!!
BREAKING: Coronavirus outbreak at Phillies camp -- 8 positive tests. Story herehttps://t.co/YhBRXdgksX
— Jim Salisbury (@JSalisburyNBCS) June 19, 2020
Oh yeah, there are still people that might get sick and they should think about if they should even play this year. In fact, it isn’t just a Phillies thing. During the day, there were several reports of teams that were shutting down operations at their training sites due to COVID-19 breakouts.
That’s four teams today. https://t.co/rTNnMoITsf
— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) June 20, 2020
Then we come to find out that you know what? Maybe playing baseball in the midst of a pandemic isn’t exactly something we need to be doing. MLB took notice late Friday night and shut it all down.
MLB closing all spring training facilities in Arizona and Florida to curb coronavirus spread https://t.co/3BSnaanrwl
— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) June 20, 2020
Even if there is some kind of way that the players and owners can figure out how many games they are going to play, there is no guarantee that they will even finish the season in the first place. If you’re like me, you want baseball back in the worst possible way. But if the players cannot be guaranteed to be safe in the environment in which they work, perhaps the best avenue to take is to cancel the season altogether, citing concerns for the health of the players, stadium workers and other essential workers.
There just isn’t much happy news right now about baseball.