Smile, though your heart is breaking....

In difficult times, we seek sage words from familiar and comforting voices. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more familiar and comforting voice than legendary broadcaster Vin Scully's. And as for sage words, no baseball broadcaster has provided more.

So it was a big lift to the spirits of many across America and the world to hear from the 92-year-old Scully as the world continues to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. The Dodgers posted a short video message from him on Twitter, and many were immediately transported back to better times just by hearing his voice.


"Hi everybody, and a very pleasant good afternoon to you, wherever you may be," Scully said, adding an apology that the phrase was force of habit from his unmatched 67-year play-by-play career.

"Wherever you may be -- that means most of you are home, as I am, waiting hopefully for Opening Day," Scully continued. " ... These are tough times, certainly I don't have to tell you that. But having lived as long as I have lived, I've seen this country -- the greatest country on earth -- get off its knees, literally and figuratively, when they were down and out during the Great Depression, and when they were on their knees after [the bombing of] Pearl Harbor.

"And what happened then was they unleashed a tiger, and the tiger was the whole country pulling together and getting not only back on its feet, but saving the whole world. For you and I, yeah things are tough, but we'll be up off our knees soon. ... Above all else, smile, because when you smile, it makes everyone else feel better."

Scully was the Dodgers' play-by-play broadcaster from 1950 through 2016, and was NBC Sports' voice for baseball, including many World Series. His unforgettable calls, such as his description of Kirk Gibson's legendary home run in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series, along with countless others in some of the biggest moments in the game's history, reverberate in the memories of baseball fans everywhere.

Scully's reassuring, grandfatherly tone gives us a welcome message in a time that has been so trying for so many.

If the shoe fits.....

Baseball jersey fabric is going to the front lines of the fight against coronavirus.
In an effort to help mitigate the national shortage of personal protective equipment that has become a pressing issue for healthcare workers and emergency personnel battling the COVID-19 outbreak, Fanatics, the company that manufactures the official uniforms for Major League Baseball, is taking the raw materials typically used in the creation of MLB jerseys and instead using them to create masks and hospital gowns. MLB and Fanatics are absorbing all costs associated with the endeavor.

“We hope this effort can play a part in coming together as a community to help us through this challenging situation,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement.
Fanatics has halted jersey assembly, instead using its 360,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in Easton, Pa., to create up to 1 million masks and gowns, with plans to produce these items as long as the need exists. The distribution of the equipment has begun throughout the state of Pennsylvania and will extend across New Jersey and New York, which has become the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States.
The initial masks and gowns have been made from the jerseys of the Phillies and Yankees -- complete with each club’s recognizable pinstripes. As production and distribution expands, other team jersey materials will be utilized.

“The COVID-19 crisis has compelled our country to be more collaborative, innovative and strategic than ever before,” Fanatics executive chairman Michael Rubin said. “As the demand for masks and gowns has surged, we’re fortunate to have teamed up with Major League Baseball to find a unique way to support our frontline workers in this fight to stem the virus, who are in dire need of essential resources.”

According to an estimate by the Department of Health and Human Services, up to 3.5 billion face masks will be needed in the U.S. alone to fight the pandemic. The shortage of protective gear has become a dire situation in the country, prompting Rubin to explore the feasibility of using the company’s large manufacturing facility to help.
Rubin initially worked with Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf and state Attorney General Josh Shapiro to hatch a distribution plan, then sought the input and assistance of Manfred, who loved the idea and was eager to get started.

“I’m proud,” said Manfred, “that Major League Baseball can partner with Fanatics to help support the brave healthcare workers and emergency personnel who are on the front lines of helping patients with COVID-19. They are truly heroes.”
Announced on what was supposed to be Opening Day on Thursday, the textile repurposing is a demonstration of the impact the sport can still have in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, even as the games remain halted.

Wash your hands for 30 seconds with soap and water

a baseball poem for the ages

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The burden of hard hitting. Slug away

      Like Honus Wagner or like Tyrus Cobb.

Else fandom shouteth: “Who said you could play?

      Back to the jasper league, you minor slob!”

      Swat, hit, connect, line out, get on the job.

Else you shall feel the brunt of fandom’s ire

      Biff, bang it, clout it, hit it on the knob—

This is the end of every fan’s desire.

The burden of good pitching. Curved or straight.

      Or in or out, or haply up or down,

To puzzle him that standeth by the plate,

      To lessen, so to speak, his bat-renoun:

      Like Christy Mathewson or Miner Brown,

So pitch that every man can but admire

      And offer you the freedom of the town—

This is the end of every fan’s desire.

 

 

T

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The burden of loud cheering. O the sounds!

      The tumult and the shouting from the throats

Of forty thousand at the Polo Grounds

      Sitting, ay, standing sans their hats and coats.

      A mighty cheer that possibly denotes

That Cub or Pirate fat is in the fire;

      Or, as H. James would say, We’ve got their goats—

This is the end of every fan’s desire.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The burden of a pennant. O the hope,

      The tenuous hope, the hope that’s half a fear,

The lengthy season and the boundless dope,

      And the bromidic; “Wait until next year.”

      O dread disgrace of trailing in the rear,

O Piece of Bunting, flying high and higher

      That next October it shall flutter here:

This is the end of every fan’s desire.

ENVOY

Ah, Fans, let not the Quarry but the Chase

      Be that to which most fondly we aspire!

For us not Stake, but Game; not Goal, but Race—

      THIS is the end of every fan’s desire.

What's to watch

It’s an odd thing to be excited to watch reruns of classic baseball games. It is, perhaps, odder still to cede control of which old games to watch to a cable TV network that’s currently starved for content.

But these are odd times, and I am indeed — and oddly — excited for the fact that over the next three weeks Sportsnet will continue to air more than a dozen classic Blue Jays games (as they did on Monday night, and began to do over the weekend). Even if they’re maddeningly being played at warp speed, game-in-an-hour style, as Monday’s airing of Game 4 of the 1992 ALCS was.

Sports are communal. You can’t replicate what it felt like as Toronto and all of Canada were swept up in the Raptors’ championship run last year (which is also now being re-aired, in full, on alternating nights by Sportsnet and TSN). Or how it felt when the Jays made their magical ALCS runs in 2015 and 2016. For die-hard Blue Jays fans who had followed every game through ups and downs over the long period between the World Series years and 2015, it was a thing of genuine beauty.
In Toronto, it felt like the Jays were on in every cab in the city, and every coffee or grocery lineup transformed into an impromptu sports bar.
The reality was surely not quite so monolithic, but that’s how it felt. People with usually no interest in the sport were suddenly all-in. There was a sense of “us.” That for all the good and all the bad the comes with any place, on this, the Blue Jays, we were all pulling in the same direction.
That’s rare. That’s special.
Sports without community is just exercise. A community without sports has a giant hole in its heart. And that, I think, is why the suspension of sports was what finally made the very serious situation the world is in right now, real.
Fortunately, as we all start coming to grips with and getting used to the new normal, we can still turn to sports. Yes, there are thousands of games archived on YouTube, and in various other places across the web, which any of us could watch whenever we wanted. But without that sense of community, without anybody else to talk about it with, or tweet about it with, the essence is missing. We can’t do it all on our own. I mean that not only in the sense that we need someone to direct the programming but in the bigger sense, too.
I guess what I’m saying is that I expect I’ll be watching a lot of old baseball games in the coming weeks (or hyper-speed facsimiles thereof), and hoping a lot of other fans do too. No, it won’t be the same as watching live and in real-time, hanging on every pitch. No, these reruns aren’t going to unite the country — we’ve got bigger things to be worried about anyway. But for those of us who do choose to keep baseball part of our daily ritual in whatever way possible, they’ll give us something to talk about. And because of the particular games that are being selected, they’ll give us a chance to relive — or live for the first time — memories and achievements that really mean something here.
It’s a lot better than nothing. It’s Blue Jays baseball. It’s us.

Back in the considerably more dire present, Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro spoke to reporters this week via conference call. The Athletic’s Kaitlyn McGrath has everything he said covered, from the important bits — like the effort to ensure the organization and the public stay safe, and that minor leaguers and gameday employees are “made whole” financially, to the comparatively trivial.
“I would say to pick up the paper or turn on the TV, recognize where we are in the curve and when the curve starts to flatten, you can start to project weeks out that we could begin to play games,” Shapiro said, regarding when the 2020 season might actually be able to begin. “Until then, we’ll just think about what the math looks like, what the projections look like and scenario plan off of that.”
That shutting down of camps has sent most players back home, but not all. As was fairly well known (and addressed by Shapiro during his conference call with reporters over the weekend), Hyun-Jin Ryu is in Dunedin as he’s been unable to return home to South Korea due to pandemic-related travel restrictions. Two other new Jays pitchers, Shun Yamaguchi and Rafael Dolis, remain in Dunedin as well.
Less publicized has been the fact that the Jays have 18 young minor leaguers from Venezuela, including one of the team’s top prospects, 20-year-old catcher Gabriel Moreno, have also been unable to go home. The Athletic’s John Lott has their story — one that he says is “is like a pebble in a landslide when viewed in the context of a pandemic.” But which is harrowing nonetheless.

Was Donaldson’s 2015 MVP award a mistake?

You’d have an awfully hard time convincing Blue Jays fans, who saw up close everything that Josh Donaldson did for their team in that magical MVP season of 2015, that he probably wasn’t deserving of the award. I will attempt to do no such thing here. But if anybody did want to make the case for the 2015 AL MVP award going to someone other than the then-Blue Jays third baseman, they recently received some excellent ammunition.


The season most affected by this dip? You guessed it: Donaldson’s 2015.
But the eye test Jim, the eye test. Yes I know he passed the eye test, but stats do not lie either.

His DRS for 2015 had been +11, but is now shown as -3. Donaldson lost 1.4 fWAR in the new calculations, meaning that instead of a whopping 8.5 wins above replacement, he’s now calculated (by this version of WAR) to have been worth (an only slightly less-whopping) 7.1 WAR. The change turns 2015 from the best season of his career by nearly a full win to now his third-best year, by fWAR. Donaldson’s revised totals give him 7.2 WAR in both 2013 and 2016.
I hate new fangled stats.

Adding insult to insult, this now means that Donaldson ranked 10th overall in the major leagues by WAR in 2015, sixth among position players, and third among American League position players. By the Fangraphs version of the metric, he trails the Angels’ Mike Trout by half a win, 8.7 to 9.3. But now, according to Baseball-Reference, Trout is significantly ahead of him: 9.6 to 7.1. Worse, then-Orioles shortstop Manny Machado has managed to leapfrog Donaldson on the leaderboard, coming in at 7.5.
WAR isn’t the be-all, end-all, of course. The fact that it can be made retroactively so volatile tells us that quite clearly. And there are other factors that voters often choose to make an MVP award about — fairly or unfairly, like whether a player’s team made the playoffs. In this case, Trout’s team did not, while Donaldson’s did (albeit not until they added Troy Tulowitzki and David Price to the roster). But 2.5 wins is no marginal gap!

That’s not to say Donaldson didn’t deserve the award, or that his season wasn’t bloody spectacular, or that anybody should think any differently in light of these changes. It’s simply to say that 2.5 wins is no marginal gap!

What of the pitchers?

With a shortened season an inevitability, things aren’t going to be normal, even when they get back to normal. Last week The Athletic’s reporter went deep into the data, and used his incredible connections, to give us a picture of how pitchers — starting pitchers, in particular — will bear the brunt of the coming changes to the schedule.
For the time being, he says, in order to avoid a rash of injuries down the line, they need to keep throwing.
“A full shutdown would take pitchers all the way back to October and mean they would need a four-month process to return to being ready for the season,” he writes.
Concerns about pitching injuries are relevant to every team, but the Blue Jays need to be especially mindful of their potential ace, Nate Pearson. Not that the events of the last few weeks have been ideal for any team, but they certainly haven’t been great for Pearson or the Jays. The club would have undoubtedly loved to see him build up as many innings as possible in 2020, and take a huge step toward becoming a top-of-the-rotation workhorse. As things stand, that’s going to be tricky. And expect the Jays to err rather heavily on the side of caution, as Pearson is an incredibly valuable piece of their future — something we can see (and hear) quite clearly in the words of MLB Pipeline’s Jim Callis, who gushed about Pearson last week as he revealed Pipelines' to 30 prospects for the 2020 season, as well as on the most recent episode of The Athletic’s own Blue Jays podcast, Birds All Day.
As co-host of that podcast, I heard first hand just how excited Callis is for Pearson — whom he believes could pitch in the majors right now, and may already be the Jays’ best pitcher.

Look, a roster move!

Late last week, the Blue Jays actually made a roster move, announcing that pitchers Anthony Kay and Sean Reid-Foley have been optioned to Triple-A Buffalo. Though not an especially surprising move, the timing was obviously a little odd. I’d have expected the Jays to wait until late into camp before sending these two down, and it wouldn’t have shocked me if Reid-Foley had managed to find his way into the bullpen at the big league level, either.
The Jays had been stretching him out as a starter this spring, but it seems clearer and clearer every year that his future is probably in relief. That’s not to say that the Jays are wrong here — it’s best to keep any pitcher a starter for as long as possible — but with the Jays sitting on a load of starting depth for Buffalo, one of the obvious ways to ease the logjam might have been to finally accept that Reid-Foley’s best chance to success is in the bullpen.

As always folks, stay safe and stay indoors if at all possible.

For Sale

The future is uncertain for Chris Sale as he heads for Tommy John surgery, but the good thing for him is that he’s far from the first pitcher who’s needed the surgery.
Since Dr. Frank Jobe performed the first ulnar collateral reconstructive surgery on Tommy John in 1974, hundreds of major-league pitchers have had the same surgery, to varying degrees of success.
Jon Roegele, a writer for Fangraphs.com, is the curator of one of the most comprehensive lists of Tommy John surgeries among pitchers from high school through the majors. According to Rogele, 442 MLB pitchers have had Tommy John surgery over the past four decades.
There were 113 instances of the surgery for a pitcher over 30 years old, like Sale. In those cases, 86 times (76.1 percent) the pitcher returned to MLB action. The average recovery time (where accurate data are kept on surgery dates) before returning in those 113 surgeries was 17.8 months.
From that field of 113 surgeries, there were 10 examples of a pitcher making an All-Star team after his return. Among that same group, 48 had made All-Star appearances before having Tommy John surgery.
The Tommy John surgery has become so commonplace in baseball, it’s often thought of as a routine procedure. But it’s far from that, especially for veteran pitchers. The fact that just 10 pitchers returned to All-Star status after surgery could be a harbinger of bad news, but there are also several success stories Sale can follow.

• Tommy John himself was 31 at the time of surgery in 1974 and famously finished in the top five in the Cy Young voting in four of five seasons after he returned to the mound in 1976. John, who had a 19-month recovery period, played 13 more seasons after the surgery, posting a 3.66 ERA over 405 games and 382 starts.
• John Smoltz had the surgery at age 33 in 2000 and missed 14 months, but he pitched another nine seasons through age 42. Smoltz appeared out of the bullpen for the first three seasons after his surgery before re-entering the rotation at age 38 in 2005. From 2005 through 2007, he made no fewer than 32 starts, posting an average 3.22 ERA and earning two All-Star nods. He finished in the top 10 in Cy Young voting in 2006 and 2007.
• Tim Hudson, a perennial Cy Young candidate early in his career, had Tommy John surgery at age 32 in August 2008. He returned to the mound in September 2009, and during the 2010 season he earned an All-Star nod, posting a 2.83 ERA over 34 starts and 228 2/3 innings. Hudson pitched for five more seasons through his age-39 season, earning another All-Star bid in 2014, making 31 starts and posting a 3.57 ERA.
• Rich Hill had the surgery in 2011 in the midst of his first stint with the Red Sox. After a brief period of success when he returned to the mound in 2012, Hill struggled in 2013 and spent much of 2014 in the minors before pitching for an independent league team in 2015, when he was picked up again by the Red Sox and turned his career back around. Since 2015, Hill has posted a 2.91 ERA in 87 games, 86 starts.
• Another former Red Sox starter, John Lackey, had Tommy John at age 32 in November 2011 and returned in April 2013, a recovery time of 17 months. Lackey pitched at least 170 innings in each of his five seasons following surgery before retirement in 2017. In that stretch, he appeared in 153 games, 152 starts (averaging 30 per season) and posted a 3.57 ERA.
• Chris Carpenter, who won the NL Cy Young in 2005, had Tommy John surgery at age 32 in 2007 and returned after 12 months. In his first full year back in 2009, Carpenter finished second in Cy Young voting and had a league-leading 2.24 ERA, making 28 starts. He made 35 and 34 starts the next two seasons, averaging 236 innings and a 3.33 ERA at the ages of 35 and 36 before returning after the 2012 season at age 37.
On the flip side, some pitchers aren’t able to regain form following elbow surgery. Here are some of them:
• Scott Baker, a right-hander for the Twins, posted a 3.98 ERA over five seasons and 137 games, 134 starts, from 2007 to 2011 before needing surgery in 2012 at age 30. After 17 months, he returned to the majors but made only 30 more appearances, 13 starts, over the next three seasons with a 5.23 ERA before retiring.
• Joel Hanrahan appeared in just nine games out of the bullpen for the Red Sox in 2013 after his trade from Pittsburgh. Hanrahan landed on the disabled list in May 2013 with a flexor strain and subsequently had Tommy John surgery but never pitched another major-league game.
• Jason Isringhausen had three Tommy John surgeries, his second one coming in August 2008 at age 35. He returned surprisingly quickly to pitch in May 2009, just nine months later, only to land back on the injured list and needing the surgery again in June 2009. Upon returning in 2011, he did pitch 103 more relief appearances over the next two seasons before retiring in 2012.
• Similarly, Joe Nathan had two Tommy John surgeries after the age of 30. His first, in 2011 at the age of 35, kept him out 12 months, but he returned strong and made All-Star appearances in 2012 and 2013 with 67 and 66 games. But after a second surgery in 2015, he appeared in only a handful more games.
The road ahead for Sale is unpredictable at best. History shows that elite pitchers on Sale’s level — like Smoltz and Hudson, for example — have returned strong following elbow surgery after the age of 30, but there are risks aplenty, and durability and success after the fact are not guaranteed.

The Infamous Tommy John

Chris Davis

The new medication for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder that Orioles first baseman Chris Davis has been approved to take this season is unlikely to be abused by players seeking an on-field edge, according to a medical expert.

After a second failed drug test for unauthorized Adderall use last season, Davis was suspended for 25 games, including the Orioles' final 17 regular-season games and seven postseason appearances. He also will have to sit out Opening Day but is allowed to participate in spring training games.

At last month's annual FanFest event, Davis said he was diagnosed with ADHD in 2008 and that he took Adderall to help him better function in everyday life. He had been granted a therapeutic-use exemption for Adderall by Major League Baseball in previous seasons but was denied in 2013, when he led the majors with 53 homers. He did not reapply for an exemption last season, when he admitted to taking Adderall multiple times to help his focus.

Davis has been granted another year-long exemption, but for the prescription drug Vyvanse. Unlike Adderall, Vyvanse is a slow-releasing stimulant that can last, according to research, up to 14 hours, according to Dr. David Goodman, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. (An extended-release formulation of Adderall called Adderall XR is also available.)

Both Adderall and Vyvanse are intended to treat ADHD symptoms, but the efficacy of each dose of Adderall lasts between three to five hours, so multiple daily doses often are required. Because Adderall is a fast-acting stimulant, it is more likely to be abused for recreational or performance-enhancing purposes, Goodman said.

"When Chris Davis is taking his Vyvanse, he's taking it to treat a medical condition," said Goodman, who has not treated Davis.

"One has to make a distinction between performance-enhancement drugs and medication used to treat medical illnesses. ADHD is a psychiatric condition for which medication serves to reduce symptoms and increase daily functioning. That's in contrast to not having any disorder and taking a stimulant medication because you want to have an edge."

Davis said Wednesday that getting an exemption for Vyvanse wasn't much different from receiving prior exemptions for Adderall from MLB. In both cases, he had to seek approval from the independent program administrator of baseball's Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program.

"I think the proof that I actually needed the medication was actually going through all the tests and all the protocol to make sure I was ADHD and to find a solution for that," Davis said. "I think, for me, that was the biggest weight off my shoulders, knowing that, 'OK, this is a condition I have. It hasn't changed with age.' And using the Vyvanse, it's a little more sophisticated [of] a drug. It's something I've really enjoyed, the differences between that and Adderall."

"With good reason, they want to make sure you're getting treated for the condition you have, and we exhausted every option to do that."

Because of its long-lasting effects, Vyvanse is becoming a popular medication to treat ADHD, Goodman said. It doesn't have the "crash" effect of Adderall and isn't likely to be abused because it releases into the body more slowly, he said.

"There are subtle differences," Goodman said. "As a group, the medication serves to improve attention and concentration and reduce distractibility and improve task completion, motivation and initiative. One is no better than the other, but people do report subtle differences in side effects and mood differences. So some people prefer one over the other."

Davis said he hopes that once people grasp the differences between the medications, they will understand he didn't attempt to use Adderall for performance-enhancing purposes.

"The fact that it's introduced into your system a different way, it allows you a longer window. I think it's proof that I wasn't using Adderall for on-the-field issues," Davis said. "It was something I was taking before I ever got to the field. And a lot of that had to do with all the distractions off the field. I've said it before. If you told me to focus in the batter's box for three or four seconds, I've done that my whole life. That wasn't the issue. And I think people understand that now that the details have kind of come."

Because of confidentiality provisions in baseball's Joint Drug Agreement between MLB and the Major League Baseball Players Association, the number of exemptions granted for stimulants such as Adderall and Vyvanse is not available, according to an MLB spokesman.

Eight of the 10 disciplinary cases last season involving stimulants were for unapproved Adderall use, according to the independent program administrator's annual report. None involved Vyvanse.

The Joint Drug Agreement allows MLB to disclose only the diagnosis for which exemptions are granted. MLB granted 112 exemptions for ADHD last season, seven fewer than it did in 2013, according to the independent program administrator's annual report.

"I think it kind of says something about where he was" with ADHD, Orioles manager Buck Showalter said. "When you have something [and] you've been diagnosed with it, they have a lot of things in place they have to follow to get approved. I think, as an industry, we were concerned that people were getting not legitimately approved. So we have a system in place that really looks at it closely. If Chris had followed the right procedure, he would have been approved for it."

Davis hasn't disclosed why he wasn't granted an exemption in 2013, and since the suspension was handed down Sept. 12, he has taken responsibility for the mistake.

"I think Chris had been very up front about, 'There were rules, and I didn't follow them the way they were supposed to be followed.' But the legitimacy of the diagnosis has always been the same," Showalter said. "It's not like he was taking steroids. He just didn't follow the proper procedure for something he was diagnosed with and was legitimate. That's unfortunate.

"I don't want guys like him to start apologizing for being extremely hard workers and strong. "I think sometime we make the mistake that every time a guy hits a ball a long way or throws the ball 98 miles an hour, [they're scrutinized.] But the players will tell you, that was created by the people who didn't do it the right way. Chris does it the right way."

A baseball poem

 Brother Noah Gave Out Checks For Rain

My sermon today, said Reverend Jones,
is baseball and whence it came.
Now, if you take the Good Book and you take a good look,
you will find the first Baseball Game.

It says Eve stole first, Adam second;
Solomon umpired the game.
Rebecca went to the well with a pitcher,
And Ruth in the field made a name.
Goliath was struck out by David —
A base hit was made on Abel by Cain,
And the Prodigal Son made a great home-run.
Brother Noah gave checks out for rain.

Jonah wailed — went down swinging.
Later he popped up again.
A lion-drive by ole Nebuchadnezzar
Made Daniel warm-up in the pen.
Delilah was pitching to Samson,
When he brought down the house with a clout,
And the Angels that day made a double-play
That's when Adam and Eve were thrown out.

Ole St. Pete was checking errors,
Also had charge of the gate.

Salome sacrificed Big John the Baptist
Who wound up ahead on the plate.
Satan was pitching that apple
And looked as though he might fan 'em all,
But then Joshua let go a mighty blow
And blasted one right at the wall.

And then the Lord wound up and took good aim,
And started the very First Baseball Game.
And, now we all know the way that the game was begun,
And to this very day — It's still Number One!

by Arthur Longbrake

Covid - 19 update and MLB

As baseball officials try to figure out the best approach to dealing with the fallout from COVID-19, the league and the union are at odds over player access to spring training facilities.
For now, Major League Baseball and the Players Association agree that spring training facilities are to remain open to major-league players in a limited capacity, with organized group workouts prohibited. MLB issued a memo clarifying the league’s new protocols on Sunday, following two days of in-person meetings between league and union officials.
“The strong recommendation from our infectious disease and public health experts is that Clubs should avoid all activities in which players congregate in significant numbers or are otherwise unable to practice the ‘social distancing’ protocols recommended by the CDC,” deputy commissioner Dan Halem wrote in his memo.

Later Sunday, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended the cancellations of in-person gatherings of 50 or more people for the next eight weeks, perhaps ensuring that no professional sports league will resume play before May 10.
Players support social-distancing efforts, but the union is concerned by the widely differing approaches clubs have taken to facilitate access after commissioner Rob Manfred ordered the season delayed on Thursday. The league, reacting partly to the union’s complaints, sent the memo as a move toward greater uniformity.

The apparent inclination of some clubs to close their facilities raised suspicions on the players’ side about those teams’ motives, reflecting the ongoing labor tension in the sport. Both before and after Halem’s memo, the union received accounts from players or their representatives who were told their camps were to be shut down. Marlins president Derek Jeter reportedly said as much to players on Sunday.
A union official noted that such actions were in violation of agreements between MLB and the MLBPA. Halem reinforced those agreements in his note on Sunday, saying: “40-Man Roster players must be permitted to remain at the Club’s Spring Training site, and are eligible to receive their usual Spring Training allowances.”

Players, agents and union officials cite a number of factors in explaining why clubs should continue to provide major leaguers access to their facilities. Some players do not want to travel in the current climate. Others might live near the spring complex. Foreign players might not be able to return home easily, if at all. In addition, many players view a team facility as a safer, more controlled environment than a local gym.
The MLB memo specifies that clubs should provide players who choose to remain with access to medical care, but says teams are not required to provide all services normally available during spring training, such as on-site meals.
In the view of several executives and MLB officials, any objection to limited access in the middle of a public health crisis misses the larger point of trying to keep players safe. Those officials worry that keeping spring training sites open in any capacity will only delay a shutdown. The Yankees on Sunday said they will quarantine their minor leaguers for two weeks after one of them tested positive for COVID-19. Elsewhere, executives fear their organizations soon will face the same decision.
Club officials also express concern that older staff members at spring training facilities will be exposed to the virus by coming into contact with players who might be carriers.
“We understand that many 40-Man Roster players have chosen to remain in camp to date, but we anticipate that may change in the coming days as events continue to unfold and players become better educated about current conditions,” Halem wrote in his memo.
Most minor-league players are to be sent home, per Sunday’s memo. Even as MLB and the PA technically agree that facilities are to be open to major-league players for now, they differ about what “open” means.

Two agents used the same word — “chaos” — to describe the mixed messages players are receiving. The confusion, however, is partly the result of protocols that are changing rapidly according to the available information, MLB and club officials say.
The Orioles are among several teams cited in complaints to the union about player access to facilities, along with the Brewers, Braves, Marlins and Mets, a person familiar with the complaints said.

The Orioles’ facility is undergoing a deep cleaning, according to a club official. The Brewers are going through the same process, making certain areas temporarily off-limits. But about a dozen of their pitchers are scheduled to throw bullpen sessions at their complex on Monday, a club official said. The Braves, meanwhile, say they have remained open, and a Mets official did not immediately respond to a question about where the team stood.
Nonetheless, some on the players’ side have questioned how quickly clubs are in fact attempting to re-open.

The league and the PA continue to discuss a slew of issues, including service time and scheduling. The next set of conversations will take place by phone after Manfred and MLBPA executive director Tony Clark met face to face in Arizona on Friday and Saturday. The commissioner is scheduled to talk to all the teams Monday at noon ET.

Empty stadiums and arenas

Well, the NBA and NHL have suspended their seasons today, how long will it be before MLB does the same and suspend the beginning of the 2020 season. I figure it will happen in about two weeks or less.
I guess it was less than 4 hours as it turned out.



The coronavirus had better be taken seriously by then, or we may never see organized sports played in arenas, or stadiums ever again.

There is so much to write about but I am having a hard time getting interested in writing.

This might be my last blog until there's something positive to write about. My heart is heavy, but I guess I can say that I will return when there's news about this terrible virus being curtailed.

There are 1200 cases of the coronavirus (COVID-19) in the United States but the worldwide pandemic reached a tipping point on Wednesday as actor Tom Hanks announced he and his wife have the virus, and the NBA suspended its season after Utah Jazz player Rudy Gobert preliminarily tested positive.

 Wednesday afternoon the Columbus Blue Jackets announced fans would not be allowed to attend the game against the Pittsburgh Penguins, and there was to be an NHL statement on its future, as well.

Reports initially indicated the NHL season would cautiously continue, but the NHL punted their decision until Thursday with the following statement

“The National Hockey League is aware of the NBA’s decision tonight to indefinitely suspend its season due to a player testing positive for the coronavirus. The NHL is continuing to consult with medical experts and is evaluating the options. We expect to have a further update tomorrow.”

Most NHL teams have between 12 and 14 games remaining in the regular season with the playoffs scheduled to begin in mid-April. Various reports suggested several options were being discussed including pausing the regular season or canceling the rest of the regular season with play to resume in the playoffs when feasible.

The NBA (and NHL) is currently in the middle of the postseason push as it nears the end of its regular season. The suspension comes at an unfortunate time for the league, but it is necessary. MLB is in a much better position. The season has not started yet and MLB can easily shut down, and resume with an abbreviated schedule when appropriate.



Well, until next time, and I hope there is a next time, I am signing off Baseball Junkie...for the time being.
Pray for sanity and pray for a cure.

Stay safe everyone.

The Virus affects us all

Amid growing concern over the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak, the Toronto Blue Jays began their Sunday with a meeting that had nothing to do with baseball. Players and staff gathered at TD Ballpark to listen to a presentation by head athletic trainer Jose Ministral and discuss health and safety precautions.


The meeting underscored the importance of basics like hand washing, but unlike their counterparts in the NHL, the Blue Jays aren’t planning any drastic changes to their day to day interactions with fans and media.

“We have to inform the players about what’s going on,” manager Charlie Montoyo said, “but nobody’s talked about not signing autographs or anything like that.”

Player representative Matt Shoemaker said he and his teammates have discussed the possibility of pre-signing some balls and baseball cards for fans. At the same time, the research he has done leads him to believe more drastic measures aren’t needed.

“It’s a terrible thing,” Shoemaker said. “Everybody: stay clean, wash your hands, (do) common sense stuff. I don’t want to speak too much on it since I’m not a doctor, but I’ve done some research on it because there’s a lot of fear out there. My personal opinion is that there doesn’t need to be that much fear.”

“You go about your days the same,” he continued. “Wash your hands. Be clean. If you need to sneeze or cough, cover it up.”

While the NHL will close dressing rooms to media based on the recommendation of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), MLB teams aren’t going that far.

“We are undertaking many precautions currently,” a league spokesperson said. “For example, we are asking anyone — including media — who has visited a high-risk area, as defined by the CDC, within the last 14 days not to visit our facilities.

“We are also discussing additional measures internally and with other leagues. At this time, we have not made changes to our media access procedures, and we will advise if we determine to take such steps.”

Players have not voiced any concerns about their safety, according to Montoyo. If anything, they’ve gone out of their way to help others, as starter Hyun-jin Ryu donated $100,000 to relief efforts. Now there's a man with a heart.

 The Blue Jays are hoping increased awareness and precautions will help limit the impact of COVID-19. In the meantime, the club continues working with Toronto Public Health to monitor the virus and follow recommended safety measures. Sound advice.

And hey, I am not beyond making light of the situation, because in humour there is sanity.

Let the Shun shine in

So let me set the record straight, I like Shun, let the shun shine on me.

But the record so far is anything but bright. Shun Yamaguchi is failing in spring training to make a positive impression.

First it was the adjustment to major league ball, the size of the stitches, the whole thing was an adjustment for Shun.


His two outings to date, worse and worser, now I know there is no word "worser", but I couldn't help it. The unfortunateness of the situation is that he has signed a major league contract and the Blue Jays are expecting him to make an impact in the back of the bullpen of the bullpen

While the Blue Jays have had plenty of encouraging performances from their pitching staff in Dunedin so far, the results have been pretty mixed for Shun Yamachuchi in his first taste of pitching in North America.

The 32-year-old had a rough first outing this spring, followed by a solid performance a week ago that left everyone feeling more encouraged about one of the Blue Jays’ newest pitchers. Unfortunately, then came Thursday, and the right-hander got beat up a bit by the Philadelphia Phillies. He ended up allowing four runs on five hits, also walking two more batters over just 2.1 innings.

 The good news is that this is still just Spring Training, and the stats and even the win-loss column really don’t matter that much. However, for Yamaguchi, who is in a battle for a job in the starting rotation, these early impressions are pretty significant. Unfortunately, he hasn’t been able to start off on the right foot, as he now sports a 12.00 ERA through six innings during Grapefruit League play.

 For a skill as precise as pitching at the highest level of the sport, that “subtle” difference can be massive, and it’s understandable that anyone coming over from the Nippon Professional League in Japan would need some time to adjust.

With that in mind, and with the way Yamaguchi’s early returns have looked, I don’t think there’s any harm in admitting now that he likely won’t win the fifth starters job. That’s not to say that anything has been decided yet, but with just under three weeks away before Opening Day, it might be time to take a slightly different focus, and even take some pressure off.

The Blue Jays could still plan to stretch him out, and even plan to install him in the rotation a little later on once he’s performing a little more consistently. They’ll start the year with eight games in eight days, but then have four off days in 20 days to follow it, so they may not even need a fifth starter for every turn through the rotation. With their veterans all healthy and trending toward a routine start to their regular season schedule, the Blue Jays could also use others in the role until they feel Yamaguchi is ready to thrive, such as Trent Thornton  (who may win the job anyway),Anthony Kay, or others.

I feel for the guy, leaving your home, thousands of mile away, getting used to a new culture, a new ball, a new language, and new signs, well I guess it's rather hard transition.

Let the Shun shine.