When MLB made the decision to start its 2020 season in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, it decided against rounding up all its teams into one “bubble” city, as other professional sports leagues are doing. Every MLB team except the Toronto Blue Jays will play 30 home games in their usual home stadiums, and 30 games on the road. While players have expressed comfort with playing in their home stadiums, the planned travel to different cities has created its own set of challenges as teams work to keep their clubs safe from the virus.
Anzeige
“When we met with our guys the biggest question they had for us was, ‘What happens if I test positive on the road?'” said Diamondbacks senior vice president and assistant general manager Jared Porter, who has been overseeing the club’s COVID-19 preparations. “Since that player won’t be allowed on the flight home, we’ve spent a lot of time building contingency plans.”
MLB’s Medical Advisory Committee has issued league-wide guidelines for COVID-19 testing and access to facilities in the event of a positive test. But the league has also left a lot of granular decision-making up to each individual club, with the understanding that teams’ medical staffs need to work with local government authorities to develop specific plans of action that satisfy city and county health orders.
Teams in the West, Central and East divisions have all worked together within their regions to form exhaustive, collaborative plans to house and care for potentially sick and stranded players, multiple sources confirmed to The Athletic. Many of these team sources declined to speak on the record, citing discomfort with outlining their COVID-19 protocols due to the fluidity of the situation. One Central team said it would talk about how it was handling a player testing positive on the road once that situation became a reality. An Eastern team said their point person who was authorized to speak publicly on this issue was so busy trying to figure out the team’s new traveling schedule, now that the Blue Jays have been forced to abandon Toronto, that he didn’t have time to talk.
Teams in the AL West and NL West recently participated in a COVID-19 conference call led by Texas Rangers general manager Jon Daniels, sources confirmed to The Athletic. On the call were general managers, assistant general managers, athletic trainers, traveling secretaries, and doctors from the Mariners, Angels, Rangers, Astros, A’s, Dodgers, Giants, Padres, Rockies and Diamondbacks. Porter said the general consensus of the call was that if a player tested positive for the coronavirus on the road and had to be left behind in quarantine, the home team in that market would take care of the player and treat him as “one of their own.” This would include facilitating potential medical care and doctor visits and working with MLB to administer regular COVID-19 tests until that player tested negative twice.
Anzeige
Each Western division team has put together a list of local resources for visiting players including the contact information of members of their medical staff, popular restaurants that deliver, and nearby hospitals that are treating COVID-19 patients. “I’m going to text that information in PDF or JPEG form to our players at the beginning of each series because I want our guys to have that on their phones,” said Abe Silvestri, the San Francisco Giants’ traveling secretary.
Each home team has also made arrangements with a local hotel to house stranded visiting players. “The challenge has been finding hotels that will accept COVID-positive patients,” said Porter. “Some of the things we prioritized were rooms with first-floor access and separate entrances. Room service and Postmates access was also preferable.”
If a Diamondbacks player or staff member tests positive on the road, they will be given the option of remaining at the team hotel until testing negative twice or switching to the hotel the home team in that market has pre-arranged.
When Silvestri was mapping out scenarios for a Giants player or staff member testing positive on the road, he decided to book two additional “COVID rooms” for two weeks in each road city. “Typically we book standard king rooms on lower floors for our traveling party,” said Silvestri. “But COVID is as taxing mentally as it is physically. If someone from our organization gets sick on the road we’d like them to be able to stay in a room that is higher up with a view and also has a kitchenette.”
Both Silvestri and Porter said that if one of their players tests positive but is asymptomatic and within driving distance of home, their teams will rent a car and allow that player to drive himself home. Hotel stays would come into effect when a member of the traveling party is either symptomatic or stuck in a city too far to drive home from.
Anzeige
MLB has divided its teams into three regions this season, with teams from the AL and NL East playing each other, the NL and AL Central playing each other, and the NL and AL West playing each other. Teams in the Central are clustered the closest together, making driving a more feasible plan. According to the director of research and development for MLB, Daren Willman, the seven teams that will travel the fewest miles this season are all in the Central, with the Brewers traveling the least at 3,962 total miles.
The five teams that will travel the farthest this year are all from the West, with the Texas Rangers racking up the most miles (14,706). Should any visiting player test positive in Seattle, the likelihood he would drive himself home is slim; the closest MLB market to Seattle is Oakland, which is 801 miles away. Teams have indicated they will fly players home on private planes if the situation warrants it.
A team could choose to leave a member of its training staff behind with any player who tests positive on the road, but then would be down a trainer for the rest of the road trip. In the event that a player who does not speak English tests positive on the road and is forced to quarantine in a hotel there until testing negative twice, that player’s team will be required to leave a bilingual staff member behind with that player, an MLB source confirmed to The Athletic.
Another potentially challenging scenario is what would happen if a player tests positive on the road just before both teams (and their training staffs) fly out of town. In that scenario, the home and road teams would coordinate to assess the level of care the home team’s non-traveling training staff could provide to the COVID-19 positive visiting player, and decide whether or not to leave a member of their own staff behind to help.
“This is just one of the reasons why we are really going to have to lean on each other and trust and help each other out,” said Porter. “It’s going to be a group effort, with egos put aside, so that we can have a season.”
(Photo: Billie Weiss / Boston Red Sox / Getty Images)