NEW YORK — Former major league infielder Trevor Plouffe sparked somewhat of a storm on Monday after he posted a dubious tweet that began with five simple words.
“Want some good baseball news??” Plouffe asked, rhetorically. The 33-year-old then mentioned July 1 as a potential opening day for Major League Baseball amid the COVID-19 pandemic, with all 30 clubs opening the year in their respective home cities.
Late Tuesday night, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reported that at least one team — the Cleveland Indians — gave their players a “mark in the sand” for a possible opening day date on July 1.
Indians officials conducted a Zoom call with about 70 members of the organization and estimated that the season would begin after a three-week spring training, the report said. Officials are targeting June 10 as a potential start date for the three-week ramp up, but as new information about the virus trickles in, target dates are expected to change.
The purpose of releasing these dates comes from the club wanting its players to be ready, both physically and mentally, for the season to potentially begin. And while The Athletic’s report confirms the dates in Plouffe’s tweet, it also emphasizes how far-removed the league still is when it comes to introducing a structured plan to start playing baseball again.
Team executives, according to the report, are still concerned about the possibility of new outbreaks in budding hotbeds like Florida and Arizona. Both states had previously been mentioned by the league as possible startup hubs for the baseball season, before a new realignment plan reported last week shifted to every big league team playing in their home ballparks.
Industry leaders remain optimistic about Major League Baseball being played in 2020, despite the challenges the sport would face during these uncertain times. New regional outbreaks will create new problems, and the league is at the mercy of the virus no matter what plan it designs to begin the season.
The Athletic’s report indicated that the league’s goal is to open play in as many home cities as possible. That scenario is more challenging to the clubs based out of virus epicenters — like the Mets and Yankees — than others. Even without fans in the stands, launching spring training 2.0 at Citi Field and Yankee Stadium seems nearly unimaginable amid constant ambulance sirens reminding locals of the pandemic and the city that’s been hit the hardest.
It helps New York teams, then, that their governor, Andrew Cuomo, is all in for a 2020 baseball season. Cuomo said he spoke to Mets COO Jeff Wilpon last month about playing baseball without fans. Then, early last week, the governor encouraged “outside the box” thinking and said he could envision a scenario with the Mets and Yankees playing in Queens and the Bronx, respectively.
Other politicians are piggybacking Cuomo’s support. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he called MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, urging him to open the league because “America needs baseball” and the return of the sport in the United States “would be a great morale booster for the country and an indication that we’re going to begin to get back to normal.”
The Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) opened on Tuesday, which would be encouraging for MLB — if the United States was not so far behind South Korea in terms of testing and preparation. The KBO is the second major league, after Taiwan’s Chinese Professional Baseball League, to open its baseball season this year. It has frequent temperature tests, social-distancing guidelines in place and backup plans — like a three-week shutdown of operations — should a player contract the virus.
The thinking that some baseball is better than no baseball remains consistent among MLB executives. While target dates can be thrown around, optimism for a season should be tempered before the league centers around a logical plan for baseball in 2020.
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