NEWSLETTER
As Commissioner Rob Manfred discussed earlier today, there is no “plan” for the 2020 MLB season just yet, even as we refer to the ideas being floated out there as such. There are ideas on how the league might proceed. Lots of ideas. No doubt there are lots of ideas we haven’t even heard about yet.
So much depends on the state of the national health crisis that things could change on a dime.
But, of all the ideas we’ve seen discussed, it’s still the case that The Arizona Plan might be the most realistic (all teams in Arizona, under quarantine, no fans, etc.).
Heck, it might be the only way to launch the season:
"It seems like it's going to be Arizona or bust for Major League Baseball."@JeffPassan on the MLB happening this season. pic.twitter.com/LbBR3KcNo6
— Get Up (@GetUpESPN) April 13, 2020
As Jeff Passan notes, the one big advantage of The Arizona Plan is that it can be a start to the season, but it doesn’t necessarily have to mean that you can never return to your home ballparks for a normal remainder of the schedule. If MLB instead waited until they knew for sure they could start the regular schedule at home parks (with nationwide travel required), they might have to wait until August or later to start, and might never get to start at all.
But there’s more to it than that. It turns out that some public health experts *DO* see viability in the plan, especially compared to alternatives.
Obviously everything is dependent on how we’re handling COVID-19 nationally – testing testing testing testing testing – but I was somewhat surprised to read this AZ Central article with feedback from experts on whether MLB actually could pull off The Arizona Plan, as well as to read the references federal official positions in this Athletic article.
The general conclusion of the experts/officials in the articles is that although there are challenges and risks, yes, setting up shop entirely in central Arizona and quarantining players for the start of the season can be done … so long as there is serious testing and rigorous adherence to safety guidelines. From AZ Central:
“Baseball’s idea to bring all 30 major league teams to the Phoenix area to play its regular season in empty ballparks raises a pair of intertwined questions in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
Can the league keep its personnel healthy?
And can it execute the plan without risk to the local community?
Public health experts believe the questions are hard to answer for many reasons, but they aren’t dismissing the idea outright. It can be done, they believe, but it would represent a massive undertaking that would require quarantines, rigorous testing and strict adherence to guidelines.”
Once you get past the “can it be done,” the question is whether the upside is worth the risk, and that’s the part that is still fairly TBD. I say that not because the upside isn’t substantial (it isn’t just about the entertainment and the players and the long-term health of the sport, but it’s also about all the employees and related industries that depend on baseball). Instead, I say it because we don’t know the risk yet. We have to get to the downslope of COVID-19 cases, we have to get mass testing, we have to get antibody tests, and we have to have a much better sense of how well we can prevent second wave outbreaks.
That said, it’s mid-April. If The Arizona Plan is indeed viable in the event of X, Y, and Z, then at least MLB has the benefit of time. As we’ve discussed, to get in a 100-game season, the league really wouldn’t have to launch until late July, as they’ve committed to playing the regular season through October if necessary. Late July is three and a half months from now. So we’ll see.
For today, I’ll take the tiny bit of optimism that, yes, some experts believe The Arizona Plan is plausible.
