COVID-19 impact on MLB season

[MrTPlush]

Once the tests are readily available and athletes can be tested weekly, just start playing the games first with empty stadiums at first if you must. Risks to athletes in their 20's and 30's is minimal. The rest of us have to go to work.

 

A) This isn't about protecting athletes. It is to reduce spread so healthy people aren't giving it to at risk groups.

 

B) Many people are no longer going to work, they have been sent home and/or are working from home.

[liveforoctober]

Once the tests are readily available and athletes can be tested weekly, just start playing the games first with empty stadiums at first if you must. Risks to athletes in their 20's and 30's is minimal. The rest of us have to go to work.

 

A) This isn't about protecting athletes. It is to reduce spread so healthy people aren't giving it to at risk groups.

 

B) Many people are no longer going to work, they have been sent home and/or are working from home.

 

I understand everyone is different. I have always been a curious person but I know my 'want' to learn and discover information isn't everyone's cup of tea.. but it always bothers me, ESPECIALLY in times like this, when people form an opinion on one piece of information and drop anchor on their opinion or understanding of something. I'm not saying I know anything at all about anything... but the opinion of "I am young and healthy, I don't care about this" is potentially very dangerous in a situation like this. It isn't that hard to learn and be open to more information.

 

1) This virus has a lot of unknowns to it. Generally speaking, caution is a good thing? Diving headfirst into water is fine, but generally wouldn't you like to know how deep the water is first?

 

2) It has been very deadly to a very specific group of people who are already vulnerable.

 

3) Our hospitals/healthcare infrastructure can't handle the massive spread that this virus has shown to be capable of in other countries. Shutting down the start of the MLB season has little to do with keeping Ryan Braun or Christian Yelich healthy but much more to do with making sure Froedtert, etc doesn't break fire code.

[homer]

My wife works at a very large hospital in Chicago. They just got a notice that there is a critical shortage of certain swabs used to test for the flu so instead of using two like you usually do, you are asked to use one. This is the whole point of flattening the curve so the healthcare system is not strained. It's already being strained and we are just at the beginning of this thing.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

My wife works at a very large hospital in Chicago. They just got a notice that there is a critical shortage of certain swabs used to test for the flu so instead of using two like you usually do, you are asked to use one. This is the whole point of flattening the curve so the healthcare system is not strained. It's already being strained and we are just at the beginning of this thing.

 

Scary post. This is such an odd thing to be living through. I wish they would move on this now and just close everything. Why are we waiting for something bigger to happen? I can work remote and do most of the time, but I am still frustrated that coworkers are expected to show up right now. There are 4-6k people in my office on a given day. It's insane. Send them home.

[brwrsfan]

My wife works at a very large hospital in Chicago. They just got a notice that there is a critical shortage of certain swabs used to test for the flu so instead of using two like you usually do, you are asked to use one. This is the whole point of flattening the curve so the healthcare system is not strained. It's already being strained and we are just at the beginning of this thing.

 

Scary post. This is such an odd thing to be living through. I wish they would move on this now and just close everything. Why are we waiting for something bigger to happen? I can work remote and do most of the time, but I am still frustrated that coworkers are expected to show up right now. There are 4-6k people in my office on a given day. It's insane. Send them home.

 

100% this. I had this very discussion yesterday. I work at home daily, but my office (in the Chicago area) has hundreds and hundreds of people in it every day. Virtually all social events (even my sons Cub scout den, which has 8 kids in it) have been cancelled. Yet office buildings are open. Restaurants and bars (and all the germs that go with those place) are open. Gyms are open. Schools are open. I get we don't want to take people's rights away and these are private business that can make their own decisions. But isn't it a tad counter-productive to cancel all these things, but yet still let all these people get together daily at all of these places?

[RollieTime]

I see no way that the MLB schedule gets going before June 1st or so. That would still give them something around 100 games. If someone just contracted the Coronavirus today, don’t show symptoms for 2 weeks, and then gets sick, they will need to be quarantined and receiving medical treatment for a couple weeks beyond that at the least. A 4-5 week shutdown before resuming baseball activities is the bare minimum with it realistically needing to go longer than that. You have to assume (in my opinion) that the day of the shutdown of the sports is the first day of someone contracting the Coronavirus. Since it was only yesterday that they shut it down, the clock would start now. Not if, but when another professional athlete is diagnosed with it and we hear about it a week or two from now, we certainly will not be starting baseball activities a few days after additional positive test results pop up.

 

I think best case scenario, players will report to “Spring Training” by the end of April and need at least 3 weeks or so to ramp up again and play 10-15 games to get the pitchers stretched out a little bit again. This would already put you into late May.

 

A 100 game season or so is the best case scenario in my opinion.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

Agree that June is most likely what we're looking at in a good scenario.

[MrTPlush]

Personally I think it is being underestimated how long it will take to get going, when fans will even be allowed, and the very real possibility the season could potentially not happen. The NBA says there is a potential that the season may never be finished. Crazy as that is, no one knows at this point what will happen.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

Personally I think it is being underestimated how long it will take to get going, when fans will even be allowed, and the very real possibility the season could potentially not happen. The NBA says there is a potential that the season may never be finished. Crazy as that is, no one knows at this point what will happen.

 

It's a pretty thin line I think. If this goes even 2 months instead of one I think you're looking at no season.

 

Menomonee Falls schools have just been closed for Monday. The dominoes will begin to fall now.

[xisxisxis]

My wife works at a very large hospital in Chicago. They just got a notice that there is a critical shortage of certain swabs used to test for the flu so instead of using two like you usually do, you are asked to use one. This is the whole point of flattening the curve so the healthcare system is not strained. It's already being strained and we are just at the beginning of this thing.

There's a lot of reasons for shortages, a few:

1) Most companies have moved to just-in-time purchasing of supplies instead of having a large amount of stock on hand - when demand spikes then a shortage happens even on some basic supplies.

2) Unfortunately making 2-10X selling to panicked people on Amazon beats selling at low-price to a hospital chain. The surgeon general already warned about a possible shortage of surgical masks due to the large demand from the general public. Go on Amazon to see what items are selling for and what are out of stock. Two weeks ago, it was hard to find Purell and other hand sanitizers (I bought the component reagents at normal prices). This week the components are almost all out of stock or 4-10X the price they were when I purchased. Alcohol wipes are being bought because Lysol wipes are out of stock. People are buying the high priced items to the point of buying out the stock. Hospitals are scrambling to get stock.

 

Crazy.

[liveforoctober]

My wife works at a very large hospital in Chicago. They just got a notice that there is a critical shortage of certain swabs used to test for the flu so instead of using two like you usually do, you are asked to use one. This is the whole point of flattening the curve so the healthcare system is not strained. It's already being strained and we are just at the beginning of this thing.

There's a lot of reasons for shortages, a few:

1) Most companies have moved to just-in-time purchasing of supplies instead of having a large amount of stock on hand - when demand spikes then a shortage happens even on some basic supplies.

2) Unfortunately making 2-10X selling to panicked people on Amazon beats selling at low-price to a hospital chain. The surgeon general already warned about a possible shortage of surgical masks due to the large demand from the general public. Go on Amazon to see what items are selling for and what are out of stock. Two weeks ago, it was hard to find Purell and other hand sanitizers (I bought the component reagents at normal prices). This week the components are almost all out of stock or 4-10X the price they were when I purchased. Alcohol wipes are being bought because Lysol wipes are out of stock. People are buying the high priced items to the point of buying out the stock. Hospitals are scrambling to get stock.

 

Crazy.

 

We also get a lot of our supplies from China... who currently is not supplying.

[xisxisxis]

We also get a lot of our supplies from China... who currently is not supplying.

True, but the impact is hard to predict due to the long time it takes to get here by ship:

 

Tokyo to Seattle is 20–24 days. To San Fransisco is 18–25. Shanghai to Long Beach, CA is 22–26 days. Shanghai to San Francisco is 23–30 days.

 

So 3-4 weeks just to get a container ship to the west coast and another 3-5 days from the port to destination in the US. So shortages can take a month to recover once they've shipped from China. Longer if there are delays producing more. I imagine with prices surging that there are manufacturers ramping up production.

 

I just heard from a friend that the delay in testing kits in the US is due to a shortage of the kit used to prepare the sample to be tested (purified nucleic acids are required for the actual test) and that the manufacturer is ramping up production (in the US - it's a German company so European stock will likely go to testing in Europe). Unfortunately, standard protocol is to approve 1 kit and they didn't approve other kits so there's a bottleneck...

[MrTPlush]

I know a few people that work at MLB ballparks (and MiLB) and the general consensus is May 1st...at the earliest. That is pretty much the best case too, so it has a good chance of getting later.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

May 1 seems like basically an ideal situation where they can pick things up in 30 days and have 2 weeks of "spring training." At this point I would be ecstatic if that happened.

[patrickgpe]

honestly, I don't care when they start it up. I am more concerned about the hoarding that is not allowing people buy basic groceries. the fact that every school is closing which is not allowing kids to have a decent lunch. Parents that can't go to work because the schools are closed for a month. I know this is a baseball board, but sports seems trivial to me at this point.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

The hoarding should have been stopped in its tracks by retailers. It's not hard to stop one guy from buying 8 packs of Charmin.

[brewcrewdue80]

NBA has already been honest and said it looks like a month minimum. Mind you they can start up right away, I would guess. MLB has already said some type of spring training/conditioning would have to happen first. The odds the season is only delayed 2 weeks would be nothing short of a miracle.

 

While your example did work for a single series I bet that doesn't work for all teams...not to mention how are you rescheduling the Cardinals...who we also face in the first slate of games that is canceled? And great, we play the Cubs now...but now the Cubs never play the Nationals while every other NL Central team plays them 4 times? You just aren't fixing the schedule if weeks start getting canceled.

 

I only worked on 4weeks of schedule and found a few matchups to reverse. Im not being paid to solve the scheduling for 30teams for 140+games each to divulge. So what if the Cubs avoid the Nationals and most NL Central teams end up facing them? The goal in mind is to reach 19games faced vs each division rival. Totaling 72games.

 

Maybe under your concern MLB just ditches the normal playoffs and takes the top Division winners and play a Round robin among the 3 to come away with a WS matchup. Removing the WC/Division series to complete more reg season games.

[brwrsfan]

Going back to baseball, I can't imagine them redoing the schedule. It's just too hard. Tickets, travel, etc. have been bought and all of that. Whenever they start (assuming they do), I think their only real concern will be making sure teams play the same amount of games. There's only so much you can do if you start talking about missing 45+ days of the season. Certainly could be wrong, just my take.

[TJseven7]

Personally I think it is being underestimated how long it will take to get going, when fans will even be allowed, and the very real possibility the season could potentially not happen. The NBA says there is a potential that the season may never be finished. Crazy as that is, no one knows at this point what will happen.

 

It's a pretty thin line I think. If this goes even 2 months instead of one I think you're looking at no season.

 

Menomonee Falls schools have just been closed for Monday. The dominoes will begin to fall now.

 

Well the growth curve of this has rivaled 2009 swine flu. It escalated sooner but it has the same metric growth. This virus seems to kill 4x as many people as swine flu.

 

Swine flu was going on for almost 2 years. Cov19 is closer to SARs MERS than swine flu in origin. It's FAR closer to swine flu than Sars MERS in spread. (thank god because SARs and MERs were extremely deadly but not very contagious.

 

To say this could be awhile is an understatement. Quarantine helps protect the health system being overcrowded and delays for remedies but slowing down the spread will drag this out as well. Vaccines take 18 months. This was out of the bag before the lock down of Wuhan on Jan 23rd.

[young guns]

NCAA is granting another year of eligibility for spring athletes and are looking into winter athletes. This should have a huge impact on the draft as well. No senior signs that have no choice.

[BrewForLife]

My wife works at a very large hospital in Chicago. They just got a notice that there is a critical shortage of certain swabs used to test for the flu so instead of using two like you usually do, you are asked to use one. This is the whole point of flattening the curve so the healthcare system is not strained. It's already being strained and we are just at the beginning of this thing.

 

This is a really sharp comment. I live and work in Ho Chi Minh City, VN and have been working 3 days a week since Tet (Feb 1st) as well as working some remotely. I get my temp taken when going into work and coming into my apartment complex. We are ordered to use hand sanitizer, do not talk to others in the lift, and wear a mask in the lift.

 

I have never seen anything like this and it is for those who are at risk if they get infected as well as not burdening the ridiculously bad local health care system in place now. As bad as the local hospitals are here, the confinement and quarantine procedures are on point. Hopefully this flattens the curve and life, sport, and events can continue. Till then we are going to continue to get spots of cases that pop up--today Tom Hanks and Rudy Gobert...tomorrow the names will continue to roll in. This is going to have a longer run than many think. It has already affected NCAA seniors as they cannot play in March Madness, other careers will be affected more than Giannis' playoff run up and MVP candidacy...have we seen the end of Tom Brady and Drew Brees? No one knows.

 

By the way, this is a test run for a bug that is as contagious as the measles and as powerful as ebola.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

Weird question, but is the team store open with the season suspended? What about RTBNL?

[MrTPlush]

Current rumor is MLB is determined to keep a 162 game schedule. While they are far from a true plan (since they have no idea when they will start) is to stick the front end of the schedule on the end. If the entire month of April is missed that essentially means April is then October. Rumor has it they would stretch this thing out well into November to make it happen. An unlikely idea, that I doubt happens, is to play the World Series at a neutral site (Miami) because it obviously gets cold in many cities. Though we have a retractable roof so I don’t see the issue for half the WS equation.

[CheezWizHed]

We could simply offer to host both our home and away games for the WS.

[Thurston Fluff]

By the way, this is a test run for a bug that is as contagious as the measles and as powerful as ebola.

 

If there is anything positive to come of this it's that. We are going to face that someday and we need to be more prepared than we are now. This might be the wake up call needed to get our house in order for the day when a major killer disease comes knocking.