COVID-19 impact on MLB season

[Roderick]

Just to distract from the seriousness of all this with a hypothetical, I think a shortened season would help the Brewers. Makes it easier to win with depth, especially on the pitching side.

 

Actually, I think the opposite. Depth pays over the longer haul, as injuries etc make the other teams weaker, when we have injuries we are replacing that player with a very similar in production player. A shortened season will not help the Brewers.

 

But CC, does know how to manage to win it all as if every game is the last - which is very much needed in a 60 game season.

[IntentionalHBP]

Do you really want to win a World Series in a 60 game season though? I get that a World Series is still an accomplishment but it would always be attached to the shortened season and could lose credit.

[MrTPlush]

Some of the rules are going to be a bit of a problem whenever it starts back up (if). The DL is going to put you out almost 25% of the season, demotion rules will put you ineligible for over 10% of the season, September rules will mean an expanded roster for 33% of it or so. You could prorate those rules, but it would reduce demotion rules so much you could almost demote your starters constantly with no punishment. Would be great though if a guy needs a few days off. They could go on the DL without much downside.

 

Injuries would likely be a huge problem. Think about all those early season or ST injuries that go a solid 4-6 weeks. You would be out a crazy chunk of the year. Obliques would be crippling for ones season etc.

 

I wonder how insane the standings would be. All kinds of teams have fluky half seasons to start and then fade. A shortened year you may be in the postseason when a normal year you probably wouldn't even finish over .500 after you come back down to earth.

[adambr2]

Do you really want to win a World Series in a 60 game season though? I get that a World Series is still an accomplishment but it would always be attached to the shortened season and could lose credit.

 

Sure I do, a World Series is still a World Series. Nobody gives an asterisk to the Redskins for winning Super Bowl 17 because it was a 9 game season. No one remembers that the first NBA title of the Spurs Duncan dynasty was a strike shortened season.

 

Ultimately if the season is 60 games I'll be disappointed to have 102 less Brewer games than usual but winning the World Series would not mean less to me. You could even argue that this one will mean more from a national standpoint as the country will likely gain a new appreciation for professional sports and be looking for a team to rally behind.

[TURBO]

Do you really want to win a World Series in a 60 game season though? I get that a World Series is still an accomplishment but it would always be attached to the shortened season and could lose credit.

 

yup, someone has to win it, and I am a BIG FAN of it being the Brewers...

[DuWayne Steurer]

Do you really want to win a World Series in a 60 game season though? I get that a World Series is still an accomplishment but it would always be attached to the shortened season and could lose credit.

 

yup, someone has to win it, and I am a BIG FAN of it being the Brewers...

 

LIKE..

 

I wouldnt care if the Brewers win a 29 game round robin and get named world champs. Hang that banner.

[sveumrules]

Just to distract from the seriousness of all this with a hypothetical, I think a shortened season would help the Brewers. Makes it easier to win with depth, especially on the pitching side.

 

Actually, I think the opposite. Depth pays over the longer haul, as injuries etc make the other teams weaker, when we have injuries we are replacing that player with a very similar in production player. A shortened season will not help the Brewers.

 

But CC, does know how to manage to win it all as if every game is the last - which is very much needed in a 60 game season.

 

Ultimately the shorter the season is, the more "randomness" comes into play.

 

The nerds' computers say the Brewers would get a slight bump over a shorter season...

 

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/how-much-do-the-playoff-odds-change-in-a-shorter-season/

[owbc]

A shortened season is a huge opportunity to try something different with little risk. I hope they are not afraid to do something crazy like forgo the regular season altogether and do a big round robin tournament. It would be a real missed opportunity as well as being unfair to do a shortened season and then run the playoffs as usual. But for convenience (and honoring tickets) they might try and retain what is left of the original schedule.

[rondoman]

Highly unlikely that any baseball will be played in 2020.

 

Be realistic.

[sveumrules]

Highly unlikely that any baseball will be played in 2020.

 

Be realistic.

 

I think it's about a 50/50 chance, myself. Baseball will either be played, or it won't.

[645]

Highly unlikely that any baseball will be played in 2020.

 

Be realistic.

 

Yeah, Be realistic and open your mind and see this for what it is and see this is the biggest over reaction in the history of mankind. Can't you see it's a stupid idea coming from stupid people that can't see that it has zero chance of working.

 

You see Florida is closing the benches. It turns out spring breakers took it over and all of them think they are not going to get sick. California is telling there people to stay in the Homes because they got allot of spring breaker there and it's a big party for them because they are not going back to school anytime soon. You can be sure they not going to let there party end without a fight they going to get parties in small houses all over the place and you know the things that happen at those parties that isn't good at controlling the spread of the virus. In fact that makes the risk of spread of the virus even worse then keeping everything open. Do you really think the Governors of those states even have a chance of controlling them. The only way they can get some control over them is to open up and send them back to school. Even you going allong with it. In a few weeks it's going to April and there are going to be a few nice days and your not going to want to stay in your home on a nice day.

 

Lets talk about that virus sure it is a nasty one and yeah a good number of people have dead from it but the death totals from it is still less then the death totals of the seasonal flu. In a very bad flu season up to 68,000 people can die in the US alone. The death total of COVID-19 in the US isn't anywhere close to that yet and sure it might still spread and there could be more deaths but it's not yet a sure bet to get to that many or even as bad as the 22,000 that the flu is at right now.

 

I don't down play Coronavirus it is a nasty bug that is deadly but in the pure numbers it is not even close to being as bad as they are trying to make you think it is and most of the people that have died from it are old people that would have died anyway if they got the flu. so no mather you spin it. it can't be justafield for taking the actions that have been done.

 

So anyway, There plain is domed to failare and there is no way they can hold it together and it will not take long to happen and they will be back by mid May, June at the Latest.

Edited March 20, 2020 by 645

[djoctagone]

There plain is domed to failare.

oh, how i miss the two-fisted slobber.

[Oxy]

This is one of those weird instances where the MORE of a minority your take is on the situation the more likely you are to be right. If the gov't/powers that be say "PANIC, don't touch anybody or go out in public," and EVERYBODY except 1 guy actually listens to the advice, the bug will die out fairly quickly and that ONE guy will say "See? No big deal, everybody was freaking out over nothing." Likewise, if NO measures were ever taken and people never even heard of the bug, Urban centers would turn into disaster zones pretty quick and that one guy claiming it's the end of the world will be closer to correct BECAUSE nobody believed him.

 

Most things in life are actually self-fulfilling prophecies...this one is kind of the opposite (although still in that kind of realm).

[homer]

Covid 19 is not the flu. Stop comparing it to the flu.

[igor67]

I'm beginning to think my praise was premature. 645 is quoting stats like pitcher wins (metaphor). Only in this case it is worse because epidemiologists have had actual math models (and empirical data) that are way more sophisticated going back decades longer than anything sabermetric related.

 

Seriously you are comparing death totals for the yearly flu, where you know the key adjective is 'yearly' whereas this out break is only a few months old and most of the depths have been within the last week.

 

Again actual comparison to actual reporting even in the last 20 years will show that expert guidance has lead to much less severe responses to things like Ebola with a drastically higher death rate because the transmission rate is so much lower. If the track record of making appropriate recommendations to minimize the impact of all of these recent outbreaks doesn't convince you that you're as way off base, I would encourage you to post exactly what type of evidence can convince you that you're wrong. If you can't imagine how your mind could be changed at all that is a real problem.

[Oxy]

I'm beginning to think my praise was premature. 645 is quoting stats like pitcher wins (metaphor). Only in this case it is worse because epidemiologists have had actual math models (and empirical data) that are way more sophisticated going back decades longer than anything sabermetric related.

 

Seriously you are comparing death totals for the yearly flu, where you know the key adjective is 'yearly' whereas this out break is only a few months old and most of the depths have been within the last week.

 

Again actual comparison to actual reporting even in the last 20 years will show that expert guidance has lead to much less severe responses to things like Ebola with a drastically higher death rate because the transmission rate is so much lower. If the track record of making appropriate recommendations to minimize the impact of all of these recent outbreaks doesn't convince you that you're as way off base, I would encourage you to post exactly what type of evidence can convince you that you're wrong. If you can't imagine how your mind could be changed at all that is a real problem.

 

Well, in real life actual data terms rather than speculative panic terms, a country of well over a billion people had 80,000+ get infected within the last 3 months and over 3200 of those people died. One month ago, the stats for that country were ~75,000 infections and 2200+ deaths. The outbreak there was far worse than anywhere else in the world to this point and yet it the infection has slowed to a near standstill (only foreign cases--they say, anyway). Drastic measures were taken, and only a couple of months later it appears those measures worked (again, if you believe the numbers).

 

These numbers are so much lower than even the best case projections it is a little bizarre to me. 80,000 cases in China, only 5,000 in the last MONTH. That 80000 is .0057% of the population that is infected.

 

Meanwhile, the NYT is publishing articles about hospital bed shortages IF 20%, 40% or 60% of the US populations gets infected. Umm, what?? Granted, we're not China (Thank God) so we may not get the same kind of total control....but 20% as best case scenario vs .0057% is a gargantuan gap.

 

Obviously, the situation in Italy is much worse, and the rest of Europe doesn't look much better. Right now. In other places like South Korea things quieted down pretty quick. In other words, there is an extremely wide variance between best case and worst case scenarios right now and nobody is actually publishing the best case scenarios...because the more people that believe the best case scenarios to be true the worse things will end up in actuality.

 

There is a lot of panic and fear mongering going on right now--and it's honestly for the best. The more people that freak out (without like...ACTUALLY freaking out...mental health is important too and it's affects are more subtle than CV) in the short term the shorter overall term we'll all have to deal with this. Still, the casualty in that scenario is the actual truth, which does still matter to some people.

[owbc]

There is a general COVID-19 thread in the off topic forum, let’s stick to the MLB impacts in this one.

[umphrey]

Does anyone know what will happen to the money I spent on tickets to a game in early April?

[OldSchoolSnapper]

Does anyone know what will happen to the money I spent on tickets to a game in early April?

 

No. But you'll get a refund if no game occurs. Probably an option for a different game if the season is delayed. They won't just get to keep it without a game. The swapping out with a different game is probably as the teams will be doing anything they can to stop the bleeding.

[djoctagone]

Does anyone know what will happen to the money I spent on tickets to a game in early April?

if it was cash, there's a strong likelihood it will be used as toilet paper.

Edited March 22, 2020 by djoctagone

[nate82]

2018 and 2019 seasons are available for free on mlb.com

 

https://www.mlb.com/live-stream-games

[3and2Fastball]

I don’t think there’ll be fans in stadiums this season, based on what scientists are saying about how long this might last.

 

We’ll see if MLB chooses to play without fans. I’d think the TV ratings would be very high, with everyone stuck at home.

[adambr2]

The NBA could finish with no fans in any games and I'd be perfectly fine with that. The TV ratings would kill at this point.

 

Baseball with no fans is harder to wrap my head around. Baseball fans seemed just intertwined in the experience of the baseball season where it's hard to imagine a fan free season. I think I'd still rather have it than no baseball at all, but it's tough to imagine.

[ThisIsMyCrew]

The NBA could finish with no fans in any games and I'd be perfectly fine with that. The TV ratings would kill at this point.

 

Baseball with no fans is harder to wrap my head around. Baseball fans seemed just intertwined in the experience of the baseball season where it's hard to imagine a fan free season. I think I'd still rather have it than no baseball at all, but it's tough to imagine.

 

Virtual fans? Big screens with fans cheering/eating peanuts/etc? Crazy. But never thought we’d discuss games with no fans either.

[Oxy]

The NBA could finish with no fans in any games and I'd be perfectly fine with that. The TV ratings would kill at this point.

 

I think we could see this quicker than people anticipate. I'd imagine that Golf will be the first sport to restart though. No contact, no teams, no "league"--literally just an association of solitary independent contractors playing outside in huge areas. Nobody is forced to play. And it will get huge ratings.