Coronavirus

Rob Manfred Discusses Red Sox Investigation, Season Length

By Connor Byrne | March 25, 2020 at 10:42pm CDT

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ll have to continue to wait for answers on Major League Baseball’s investigation into the Red Sox regarding their alleged misuse of technology to steal signs. Commissioner Rob Manfred did reveal to ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt on Wednesday that he’s “done” investigating the matter. Manfred has not had time to write a public report yet, though, but he will issue a verdict sometime before the season begins (via Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times).

Of course, no one knows how long the coronavirus will continue to delay the campaign. Thursday was supposed to be Opening Day, but that event (if it comes at all this year) is probably at least a couple months away. However, Manfred is hopeful that the league will be able to ramp back up within the next several weeks.

“My optimistic outlook is that at some point in May we’ll be gearing back up,” he said (per Evan Drellich of The Athletic). “We’ll have to make a determination depending on what the precise date is as to how much of a preparation period we need.”

That’s at least somewhat encouraging. But sadly, such a late start seems sure to render a typical 162-game season impossible. Manfred admitted as much, telling Van Pelt (via Chandler Rome of the Houston Chronicle): “Obviously our fans love a 162-game season and the postseason format that we have. We’re probably not going to be able to do that this year. I think that’s clear.”

Despite what’s sure to be a shortened season at best, Manfred’s confident that MLB, whenever it returns, will play a role in “the healing in this country.”

More On MLB’s Plans To Adapt To Coronavirus Stoppage

By Jeff Todd | March 25, 2020 at 4:35pm CDT

4:35pm: MLB’s latest proposal includes a delayed draft and would provide players with the same service time they accrued in 2020, tweets Rosenthal. It seems the league aims to contend that such a proposal only shorts players who’d make their MLB debut in 2020, although notable mid- and late-season call-up would also consequently fall shy of a full year of service. Second-half call-ups like Bo Bichette, Gavin Lux, Jesus Luzardo and many others would receive some big league service time under that scenario but still fall shy of the requisite 172 days of service that constitutes a full year. It remains to be seen if that’s a trade the union is willing to make.

That proposed scenario would be a nightmare scenario for a club like the Dodgers, who traded young talent and took on considerable financial obligations in order to acquire the final season of club control over Mookie Betts. It’s unclear just how the league and union would allay any concerns that would surely arise from the Dodgers and other organizations who traded for one-year rentals.

1:01pm: We checked in last night on the latest talks between MLB and the MLBPA regarding the many complicated issues presented by the coronavirus-driven stoppage of play. While it seems players will be assured of recording full service time if the season is played, there’s plenty more to sort out.

ESPN.com’s Jeff Passan and Kiley McDaniel provide an update on the latest plans, and the New York Post’s Joel Sherman has penned a column with additional updates of his own. Unfortunately, the overriding concern — the ability to safely stage games — remains wholly subject to the unknown whims of the future.

The goal is to shoehorn in as many games as possible once that becomes possible. At the moment, it seems the most optimistic outcome would be a June resumption of play, with July perhaps more likely. That’ll dictate how many contests can be staged.

To maximize the number of games, the plan appears to call for numerous double-headers and perhaps even an accelerated second Spring Training. Active roster expansion would be offered to help allay concerns with overworked pitching. The postseason would be pushed into the deep fall, or perhaps even the winter, at neutral sites. As Sherman points out, the league has some concern about television broadcast rights when major networks will be carrying key games from other sports (e.g. Sunday NFL coverage).

It’s not just teams and the league that are pushing to do as much as possible. In large part, all parties are in this together. MLB’s most powerful agent, Scott Boras, still thinks a complete season is plausible, as Mike DiGiovanna of the Los Angeles Times reports. Even a mid-summer start would permit a 144 or even 162-game regular season and full postseason slate, says Boras — if the tail end was played at neutral sites right through late December.

The talks also involve quite a few other matters, some of which are more concrete. MLB has committed to advancing $150MM in salary to be distributed to 40-man roster members. There’s also consideration of issuing payment to minor-leaguers at something close to their regular salary for at least some stretch of time.

So long as there’s a season to be played, it stands to reason that most matters will be sorted out so long as there’s sufficient good will between the sides. But even that will require some adjustment; as Passan and McDaniel note, the arbitration system is one of many areas that will have to be modified temporarily.

The draft, too, is a hot-button issue. It seems the two sides have discussed a wide range of scenarios. Sherman writes that the event could pushed back or shortened, with signing bonuses paid out over a longer term rather than in an up-front lump sum. SportsGrid’s Craig Mish suggests (via Twitter) that shortening the event — perhaps to as few as 10 rounds — could be likeliest.

But the real trouble lurks beyond: what if there is no 2020 season? That would unveil a host of thorny matters. MLB and MLBPA negotiators have evidently had less success agreeing on how to respond to such a drastic development. They’ve tabled those talks for the time being while hoping, along with the rest of us, that dealing with that outcome doesn’t prove necessary.

Teams & Players Adapting Opt-Out Plans Amid Coronavirus Uncertainty

By Jeff Todd | March 25, 2020 at 11:02am CDT

Typically, late March is a time in which we see a lot of roster movement as clubs sort out their Opening Day rosters. Veteran free agents on minor-league deals can often force the action by virtue of opt-out clauses in their contracts. But the situation looks quite a bit different under the unusual circumstances of the delayed 2020 season.

League rosters have not been frozen. And there’s no rule suspending the operation of those opt-out clauses. Accordingly, teams and player agents have been left to sort things out on a case-by-case basis.

MLBTR’s Steve Adams reports (Twitter link) that there are a variety of approaches being taken around the game. In some cases, teams and players have effectively pushed back the decision by reaching new agreements pegged to some future date — from the start of a second Spring Training or eventual Opening Day. The Phillies, Blue Jays, and Pirates are in the latter camp.

In other situations, it seems, the sides have more or less tabled the details, leaving for another day a determination on the operation of the opt-out clause. And in still other cases, there’s still uncertainty. The Royals, for instance, are still trying to decide how best to handle the immediately pending (March 26th) opt-outs of veteran relievers Greg Holland and Trevor Rosenthal.

It’s certainly possible that those and other players will simply exercise their opt-out rights as originally negotiated. We’ve already seen some players — Joe Panik with the Blue Jays; Ryan Buchter with the Angels — earn 40-man roster spots in recent days, so some clubs have obviously been willing to make commitments.

Curious how this might impact your favorite team’s plans? Our 2019-20 Free Agent Tracker includes links to all of our posts on minor-league signings, with simple filters to help you isolate the signings of interest. At minimum, you’ll see many of the players who were brought into camp as non-roster invitees. And the linked posts on the signings include opt-out details, if they were reported.

Latest On Talks Between MLB, MLBPA

By Connor Byrne | March 25, 2020 at 1:36am CDT

The unfortunate reality is that we’re all but certain to see fewer Major League Baseball games than usual in 2020. That could have an effect on many different aspects, including players’ service time. That’s always a contentious issue, evidenced in part by Kris Bryant’s battle with the Cubs during the offseason, though it does seem the league and the players are coming together on the matter during this time of crisis.

According to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic (subscription link), MLB is going to grant a full year of service time to all players who remain active throughout the upcoming campaign, no matter how many games are played. That could obviously have an impact on teams’ decisions to promote their prospects if a 2020 season takes place, not to mention the effect on upcoming free-agent classes. It’s no doubt welcome news for someone like all-world Dodgers outfielder Mookie Betts, a contract-year player who needs 102 more days of service time to reach the open market. Considering the current circumstances, neither Betts nor anyone else may be in position to accrue 102 days this year.

In the event of a coronavirus-forced worst-case scenario that would rob us of baseball in 2020, how would the sport proceed with respect to service time? That’s unclear right now, per Rosenthal, who writes that the league and the players remain hopeful that “as many games as possible” will occur in 2020.

The sides continue to negotiate on various matters, reports Rosenthal, who adds that the union sent its latest proposal Tuesday. The United States is amid a national emergency, thus giving commissioner Rob Manfred the right to withhold players’ salaries. But the league’s not doing that as of now. Rather, it offered a lump-sum advance of over $150MM (more than $125K per 40-man roster player) during earlier talks with the union, Rosenthal relays. However, the parties are still trying to hammer out an agreement that works for the two of them.

Red Sox Minor Leaguer Tests Positive For Coronavirus

By Darragh McDonald | March 24, 2020 at 8:10pm CDT

An unnamed Red Sox minor leaguer has tested positive for COVID-19, the team announced Tuesday. According to the statement:

His positive test occurred on March 23rd following his return home and he was last at the Fenway South Player Development Complex on March 15th. Given the timing of the player’s positive test and travel, we believe it is more likely that he contracted COVID-19 after he left Fort Myers. Nevertheless, out of an abundance of caution, the club is shutting down Fenway South from all activity effective today, for at least two weeks.

The statement goes on to say that the facility will now receive a “deep cleaning” and that anyone who came into contact with this player has been instructed to go into self-quarantine for two weeks.

This illustrates the potential dangers of attempting to maintain camps and group workouts during the pandemic. According to Chris Cotillo of MassLive.com, many Red Sox players, including major leaguers, had still been working out at the facility (Twitter link). Hopefully, the team is correct in its assessment that the player in question contracted the virus after leaving.

This is now the fourth case of a positive test for COVID-19 for someone connected to Major League Baseball, joining a Reds employee and two minor leaguers in the Yankees system. The statement notes that the player in question is “doing well” but does not elaborate because of privacy concerns.

2020 Olympics Postponed; Latest On Baseball In Korea & Japan

By Jeff Todd | March 24, 2020 at 8:22am CDT

It’s now official: the 2020 Tokyo Olympics will not take place as scheduled. When they’ll occur remains to be seen, but the announcement indicates the hope is to stage the games no later than next summer.

That’s a matter of direct interest to the many ballplayers who had been slated to participate. It’s also the latest in a string of dramatic blows to the sporting world delivered by the coronavirus pandemic.

There’s still no real sense of when and how Major League Baseball will ramp up for the 2020 season. But even with the cancellation of the Olympics, there is some relatively hopeful news from across the Pacific. MLB’s peers in Asia are now getting in the swing of things, albeit haltingly.

In Korea, it’s possible that exhibition contests will begin within two weeks, Jeeho Yoo of Yonhap reports on Twitter. The Korea Baseball Organization won’t begin until some point after April 20th, but the gears are now turning toward a resumption of play.

That effort hasn’t been without its interruptions. The Doosan Bears just became the latest KBO club to pause team training work due to a concern with internal spread of the virus. Yoo tweets that he has now counted seven such interruptions as the league tries to achieve the difficult balance of proceeding with their season while also protecting personnel and respecting the broader public health needs.

Over in Japan, the league is eyeing an Opening Day no sooner than April 24th, per a Nikkan Sports report (Japanese language link; h/t Patrick Newman of NPB Tracker, via Twitter). But that’s still a hypothetical goal. The Olympic postponement will bear on the plans in Japan, as there’s now additional scheduling flexibility to work with.

Those professional leagues will still face huge challenges as they proceed. But these efforts suggest there’s still a near-term path for professional sports in countries that gain some measure of control over the spread of the virus.

How The Delayed Season Impacts The Angels

By Connor Byrne | March 23, 2020 at 6:51pm CDT

As is the case with just about every team in the majors, the coronavirus-forced delay to the start of the season will have an effect on the Angels. It may be at least two or three months before we see any meaningful games, which isn’t necessarily horrible news for the Angels’ rotation. Last season, the organization’s fifth straight without a playoff berth and its fourth in a row with more losses than wins, the Halos’ starting staff was especially ineffective. The club’s starters ranked toward the bottom of the league in virtually every key statistic and didn’t have a single hurler amass 100 or more innings.

One important reason the Angels’ rotation had such difficulty in 2019? The absence of two-way star Shohei Ohtani, who could only DH – not pitch – after undergoing Tommy John surgery on his right elbow in October 2018. The hard-throwing Ohtani dazzled on the mound as a rookie that year, albeit over a mere 10 starts and 51 2/3 innings, with a 3.31 ERA/3.57 FIP and 10.97 K/9 and 3.83 BB/9. The Angels desperately needed that type of front-line production from someone last year, and perhaps Ohtani will be able to provide it over a larger sample of work this season. In a normal season, though, the Angels would have had to go at least several weeks before finding out whether Ohtani would be able to pick up where he left off as a pitcher two years ago.

At last check about a month and a half ago, the 25-year-old Ohtani wasn’t going to be ready to return to the Angels’ rotation until the middle of May. Now, with the season having been pushed back, the Angels might be in position to get a full year from Ohtani the pitcher. That’s welcome news for a team that, despite its best efforts, was not able to pull in a high-end starter during the offseason.

The Angels’ staff also could be more likely to get a whole season (or something close to it) from righty Griffin Canning. His status is less certain than Ohtani’s, though. The 23-year-old received “biological injections” in his balky right elbow March 11, at which point it was reported more would be known on Canning’s status in three to four weeks. But if Canning emerges with a clean bill of health and can take the hill in 2020, it would be yet another boon for the Angels. He enjoyed a respectable debut showing last year, after all, tossing 90 1/3 frames of 4.58 ERA/4.37 FIP ball with 9.56 K/9 against 2.99 BB/9.

If the season opened when it was supposed to on March 26, it’s unclear whom the Angels would have relied on after Andrew Heaney, Julio Teheran and Dylan Bundy. Patrick Sandoval, Matt Andriese, Jaime Barria and Dillon Peters are the other starting possibilities on their 40-man roster. It’s fair to say there isn’t a ton of upside in that group, but getting Ohtani and Canning back would change that and give the Angels a better chance to vie for a playoff berth.

Elsewhere, the Angels are anticipating the MLB debut of Jo Adell – a hard-charging outfield prospect who ranks as one of the sport’s elite farmhands. The soon-to-be 21-year-old seemed like a sure thing to come up sometime this season, but will that change with a shortened schedule? Will the Angels decide Adell needs a good deal more seasoning at the Triple-A level, where he accrued 132 homer-less plate appearances last season? And what about service-time considerations? That’s something every team keeps an eye on with respect to its top prospects, but we don’t know how baseball will sort that out in a truncated campaign. And, of course, whether Adell does premiere in 2020 will have an impact on the Angels’ current right field choices, Brian Goodwin and David Fletcher chief among them.

Up in the front office, the executive who drafted Adell – general manager Billy Eppler – is entering a contract year. One has to wonder if a season of fewer than 162 games will affect his status. For example, if the Angels struggle, will owner Arte Moreno be more inclined to give Eppler the benefit of the doubt because of these strange circumstances? That’s just one of the intriguing questions the Angels are facing heading into what will be an unusual season of baseball (if we get one at all).

How The Delayed Season Impacts The Phillies

By Steve Adams | March 23, 2020 at 12:45pm CDT

Last week, MLBTR’s Connor Byrne took a look at how the delayed start of the 2020 season will impact the Yankees. We’ll be running out a look at how all 30 clubs will be impacted in the days and weeks to come. And since we’ve already tackled the Phillies’ Offseason in Review, let’s now turn to how this will impact their roster choices down the road.

First and foremost, left fielder Andrew McCutchen should have ample time to rehabilitate his knee. The 33-year-old tore his left ACL last year and was expected to be ready to join the Phillies’ lineup at some point in April. With the season pushed back until at least May 10 — quite likely longer than that — McCutchen should be good to go for the year’s first game, barring any sort of setback.

He may not be the MVP-caliber talent he once was, but McCutchen was an important part of the Philadelphia lineup all the same. In 59 games and 292 plate appearances, he posted a .256/.378/.457 batting line with 10 homers, 12 doubles and a triple. Cutch’s career-best 16.4 percent walk rate and sky-high OBP were badly missed on a team that posted a pedestrian .319 OBP on the whole. That mark tied them for 19th in MLB, and McCutchen’s primary replacement, Jay Bruce, had the fourth-worst OBP in the Majors at .261 (min. 300 plate appearances).

McCutchen’s likely inclusion on the Opening Day roster should impact the bench mix as well. His presence would push Bruce into a more limited role and likely mean that one of Nick Williams or Roman Quinn misses out on the 26-man roster. Given that Williams has a minor league option remaining and Quinn does not, it seems likeliest that Williams would be the odd man out. The Phils have explored trading Williams in the past, and one would imagine that with a full-strength outfield that possibility would be a bit likelier.

The composition of the bench is of extra note given the abnormally large slate of non-roster players in camp hoping to secure a backup job with the Phillies; Josh Harrison, Phil Gosselin, Neil Walker, Logan Forsythe and Ronald Torreyes are among the slew of infielders Philadelphia inked to minor league pacts this winter.

On the pitching side of things, the projected delay ought to give right-hander Tommy Hunter time to ramp up. He’s on the mend from 2019 elbow surgery and was expected to miss the first month of the year prior to the shutdown. Hunter’s health is far from a given after he missed nearly all of last year with a forearm injury, which is why he took a one-year, make-good deal that only promises him an $850K base salary. But when healthy, Hunter has turned in 69 1/3 innings of 3.50 ERA ball with the Phillies. Considering the overwhelming number of injuries that left the Philly bullpen in a state of disrepair a year ago, any healthy contributions from the veteran Hunter will be a most welcome addition.

As is the case with the bench, the Phillies have a deluge of veterans competing for bullpen jobs on non-roster deals. Francisco Liriano, Drew Storen, Bud Norris, Anthony Swarzak and Blake Parker were all invited to camp. A healthy Hunter leaves one less spot to win.

Things are less certain for two other relievers: Seranthony Dominguez and David Robertson. The former underwent an MRI after experiencing a setback in his recovery from last summer’s elbow troubles and acknowledged significant concern. With a poor enough diagnosis, he could miss the entire 2020 season regardless, but if non-surgical treatment is recommended, the delay could buy him time to rehab. Robertson, meanwhile, underwent Tommy John surgery last August. The club’s hope had been that the right-hander could return in the season’s second half, and if the season doesn’t get underway until the summer, he’d theoretically be available for a greater portion of the year.

Perhaps the most interesting scenario is what the implications could be for the rotation. As Scott Lauber of the Philadelphia Inquirer explored over the weekend, the delayed start to the season lessens the need for the Phillies to monitor the workload of prized pitching prospect Spencer Howard. Considered one of the game’s 40 best prospects by each of Baseball America, MLB.com, ESPN, FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus, Howard totaled just 99 1/3 innings between the regular season and the Arizona Fall League in 2019.

General manager Matt Klentak has previously spoken about the need to make sure he has enough innings left in his arm to contribute down the stretch, and a shorter season should reduce his workload overall. That could also afford Howard fewer innings to develop in Double-A and Triple-A, but Howard ripped through Class-A Advanced en route to a Double-A promotion and found similar success there in 2019 (2.35 ERA, 38-to-9 K/BB ratio in 30 2/3 innings). He’ll surely open the season in the minors, but a similarly aggressive ascension in 2020 shouldn’t be ruled out.

Howard’s timeline to the big leagues will directly impact the bullpen composition and perhaps the very future in the organization for once-touted righties Vince Velasquez and Nick Pivetta. Both have a minor league option remaining, and it’s possible that both could yet emerge as viable pieces in the ’pen (or that injuries elsewhere in the rotation will keep one or both in a starting role). Howard’s emergence as a top-half-of-the-rotation complement to Aaron Nola is a best-case scenario for the organization as a whole, but that could still have a significant individual impact on pitchers like Pivetta, Velasquez, Ranger Suarez, Cole Irvin, Enyel De Los Santos and JoJo Romero.

AL Notes: McBroom, Tuivailala, Choi

By Steve Adams | March 23, 2020 at 8:10am CDT

Royals first baseman Ryan McBroom caught the eye of Mike Matheny before Kansas City even acquired him and before Matheny was the team’s manager, writes Alec Lewis of The Athletic in an interesting profile of the 27-year-old (subscription required). Matheny, a special advisor with the Royals last year, was taking in a Red Sox Triple-A game to watch his son, Tate; Boston’s Triple-A club was playing the Yankees’ Triple-A affiliate, and Matheny happened to catch the Scranton club on a night when McBroom blasted two of the 26 long balls he hit in Triple-A last year. Two days later — and not through any recommendation of his own — Matheny was further surprised when the Royals acquired McBroom from the Yankees. As Lewis details, McBroom’s play following a September call-up and a very strong spring have positioned him to occupy a bench spot with the Royals at the very least.

Some more news from around the American League..

It was something of a surprise to see the Mariners cut ties with right-handed reliever Sam Tuivailala last week, but Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times writes that shoulder fatigue has troubles 27-year-old since last year. The issue began while Tuivailala was rehabbing from a torn Achilles, and it culminated this spring with an alarming velocity drop. Tuivailala, who averaged 96.4 mph on his heater with the Cardinals in 2015 and 95.2 mph in his last mostly healthy season (2018) sat 85-86 mph and didn’t top 88 mph on the radar gun this spring, per Divish. Because he’s out of minor league options, the Mariners wouldn’t have been able to send him down to the minor leagues to build up arm strength, either.
Rays first baseman Ji-Man Choi will fly back to his native South Korea this week, writes Jee-ho Yoo of the Yonhap News Agency. Choi will quarantine himself for the first two weeks of his return but then plans to begin working out with his brother, who runs a training facility in their hometown. That facility will be closed until early April as South Korea endeavors to slow the spread of the Coronavirus, but if able to reopen, that would seemingly provide Choi a better avenue to prepare for the season than he has in Florida, where both Tropicana Field and the Rays’ spring complex are closed. Since being acquired in a 2018 trade with the Brewers (which sent Brad Miller to Milwaukee), Choi has batted a combined .263/.365/.472 with 27 home runs, 32 doubles and three triples in 676 plate appearances (125 OPS+).

Quick Hits: Termination Pay, Minor Leaguers, Travel

By George Miller and Mark Polishuk | March 21, 2020 at 8:52pm CDT

Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association have agreed to issue 45 days of termination pay to those players on non-guaranteed contracts who do not make their team’s 40-man roster, USA Today’s Bob Nightengale reports (Twitter link). The dollar amount of this payment is yet unknown, though it still represents a positive step taken by the league to support the players who might be affected most by baseball’s shutdown. Teams will have until the day before the beginning of the season to finalize those roster decisions.

Under normal circumstances, we would be approaching the five-day deadline prior to the original March 26th Opening Day for teams to decide on options for Article XX(B) free agents, who make up a big portion of the list of players on non-guaranteed deals. Even since the shutdown, we’ve seen a few cases of teams selecting such players (i.e. the Blue Jays and Joe Panik) to their 40-man rosters in order to lock in their contracts for the 2020 season, since the clubs had already decided these players were going to make the team, and making that status official undoubtedly represented peace of mind for both the club and the player.

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