This was another shitty week in what feels like an endless series of shitty weeks, but with one undeniable bright spot: On Tuesday, the former staffers of Deadspin announced the launch of Defector, a new site that will be everything the old Deadspin was — sports and news reporting and commentary “without access, without favor, without discretion” — but this time funded by subscriptions and staff-owned, so safe from the threat of new private-equity owners decreeing that they stop doing everything that made the site both popular and worthwhile. I’ve already explained why I thought Deadspin desperately mattered for anyone who cares about sports’ role in our greater lives, or just likes great writing that makes you both laugh and think; you can read here my own contributions to the old site before its implosion (not sure why the article search function is listing every article as written by Barry Petchesky, who knows what the private-equity people are up to). Needless to say, launching a DIY journalism site in the middle of the collapse of the entire journalism business model is an inherently risky prospect, so if you want to give the Defector team a bit more of a financial foundation to work from, you can subscribe now. I already have.
But enough good news, let’s get on with the parade of sadness and horror:
- In the wake of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers getting $10 million in federal Covid relief cash to upgrade their stadium with a new sound system and touch-free sinks, the mayor of Manchester, New Hampshire is requesting that the state allocate $1 million in federal funds to help the New Hampshire Fisher Cats pay their rent to the city on their currently shuttered stadium. This is a trend that seems likely to continue, if only because there’s a lot of moral hazard inherent in cities and states getting to spend federal money on things that otherwise might cost them from their own budgets, so worth keeping an eye on; sure would be nice if there were a central accounting of where all the money is going, but naaaaah.
- St. Petersburg issued a request for proposals to redevelop the Tropicana Field site, notwithstanding that Tropicana Field is still on it and set to play host to the Tampa Bay Rays until at least 2027. Developers are being asked to submit by next January flexible plans that can accommodate either keeping the stadium or getting rid of it; still, you know this is going to encourage Rays owner Stuart Sternberg to step up his “if you want me to allow redevelopment of the stadium site before 2027 then let me out of my lease to move some games to Montreal” play, if only because it’s pretty much the only play he has.
- A Portuguese marketing expert expects that more than 15,000 European soccer fans are going to show up in Portugal just to hang out in the general proximity of the Champions League games being played there next month, and this is … a good thing? Because they’ll spend money? And not, say, spread virus? Also it will give Portugal “a visibility around the world” as a place that is “able to provide the right standards and the right level of security, mainly about health security,” such as by letting tens of thousands of fans congregate to celebrate the games, yep, this is totally a win-win!
- No other baseball players have tested positive for Covid in the wake of the Miami Marlins outbreak, but one Philadelphia Phillies coach and one clubhouse staffer did, so the Phillies will now be taking an enforced time out through the weekend along with the Marlins. Also, MLB yesterday ordered teams to establish compliance officers to make sure players don’t go out on the town and keep their masks on, because “better late than never” is apparently the motto of 2020. (And even while I was typing that, the St. Louis Cardinals postponed tonight’s game after someone with the team — reportedly two players — tested positive. Pandemics come at you fast.)
- The NFL’s chief medical officers has looked at baseball’s mess and concluded that putting on an NFL season will be “challenging,” and players will certainly test positive and have to be quarantined, but declined to give any details of what the rules would be if that happened, because that is most definitely the lesson everyone should take from MLB’s experience.
- News organizations are having to pay $550 a day to embed reporters in the NBA’s “bubble,” so if you want to help amortize those costs by reading the Deseret News’s blow-by-blow report on what parking is like at an arena closed to fans, it will no doubt be greatly appreciated.
- Bond rating agencies are starting to downgrade bonds sold to finance the construction of existing stadiums and arenas, which makes sense since a lot of them depend on tourist taxes and other consumer revenues, and tourism and local consumption is all but dead. What will be more interesting is to see whether this impacts the bond ratings — and interest rates — sports teams can get for future projects, which will likely be based on projection of future revenues, and which remain TBD.
- The Washington Post’s sports department took it upon itself to wildly speculate on how the pandemic will change sports long-term, and came up with a mixed bag of prognostications from the hopeful (the Olympics and its associated graft will crumble to dust) to the wishcasty (college sports will change its exploitative financial model because reasons) to the morbid (football players gonna die! even more than football players already gonna die!). I refuse to play this game in a world where our entire understanding of reality seems to change every couple of weeks, but I will say that I am extremely interested to see how sports team owners, sports team fans, and sports team–lovin’ elected officials respond once this crisis begins to ease; business as usual resumed pretty smoothly after the Great Recession, and everyone involved has a lot of lucrative reasons to do the same this time, but seismic historic shifts do happen, so, we’ll just have to wait and see. (How’s that for hedging? Hey, I accurately predicted that seven-inning games would become a thing in major-league baseball, that’s plenty for one year.)
- There are new New York Islanders arena renderings, but before you get too excited, they’re mostly just the old renderings with the new naming-rights sponsor’s logo splashed across them. They didn’t even spell out the sponsor’s name in the sky in fireworks, harrumph.
While I have very little confidence in the abilities of the people who run MLB, I can’t really fault them for attempting to operate some sort of bastardized season. There’s a staggering amount of money at stake for them, for players, for sponsors etc.
We can certainly point curiously at some of the steps they’ve taken (no bubbles, players and associated game personnel moving relatively freely from city to city etc), I am willing to believe Manfred when he says ‘we planned for several contingencies’.
I’m sure they did, and I’m sure they had some really smart people working on it (wait, the Dolan’s aren’t yet MLB owners are they?)
But they may be trying to do something that is impossible to do even reasonably safely. With this morning’s news about the Cardinals (and, no doubt, soon other teams as well), and yesterday’s news about the Phillies… we now have 8 of the 30 teams impacted directly or indirectly (Phillies now can’t play Blue Jays this weekend in all likelihood, Cards/Brewers up in the air; Marlins opponents still waiting… how did the Mets & Braves and any of the teams they have played since the Marlins outbreak escape scrutiny in this again?), and perhaps 5-10 games for each of these teams under a cloud (out of an alleged 60 game season). These aren’t normal times, obviously, but no-one would even think of calling it a “real” season if a few teams had played only 130 of their scheduled 162 games.
In short, the next few days for MLB are critical in determining whether there will be any sort of season or not. They appear to have built in 7-10 off days for each team in the proposed schedule. For certain teams, most or all of those days have now already been used up.
How many MLB players who opted in to the shortened season do you suppose are now thinking about opting out again? Several have. I suspect more will in the short term (despite the fact that otherwise healthy young athletes generally don’t appear to have severe symptoms, Freddie’s anecdotes notwithstanding).
It is getting harder and harder to see how even the 60 game shortened MLB season can be completed given where we are today. Perhaps “this” will be the end of the infections and the so called compliance officers just imposed will make sure nothing like this happens again. But I doubt that is possible.
If you’re going to try to pull off even a 60-game season, this is really the only way to do it: Expect positive cases, and shut teams down for a while and reschedule games once those happen. They maybe could have had rules in place for how to decide whether games would still be played after positive tests, beyond “ask the shortstop what he thinks,” but I don’t fault what they’re doing now.
If I’m putting money in the prediction pool, I’ll go with: They keep trying this until mid-late August, then throw in the towel on the regular season, put all the teams in quarantine for 2 weeks, and then start the postseason with all 30 teams, in a bubble.
Or strat-o-matic.
Any thoughts on whether – had they adopted some sort of regional (and bubbled) qualifying tournament – they might have made out better?
I do understand their position: that it is much harder to bubble 30 baseball teams that play every day than it is to bubble NBA, NHL or MLS teams that play 2-3 times per week and have smaller rosters.
Still, you wonder.
Not only do I think it would have worked better, I said so back in April:
https://www.fieldofschemes.com/2020/04/28/16084/the-only-thing-wrong-with-espns-prediction-of-baseball-resuming-in-2020-is-everything/
That’s where I called for seven-inning games, too. Do not trifle with my powers of prognostication.
Its not too late to do my tournament suggestion with the reborn Expos and Portland team.
How much longer can MLB go with the season? What are the odds that the Marlins do not start up by Tuesday. The Cardinals already have two players with the virus and depending on the results of the current tests, it could be more, (hopefully not). The Phillies were suppose to start this weekend and that is on hold. Collateral damage has been the Yankees, Nationals, Brewers, Blue Jays, and Orioles.
7 inning double header games, starting extra innings with runners on second, (I really hate that rule), Blue Jays with home games in Buffalo and where they happen to be before then for some games, and now talk of using winning percentage to determine where a team is in the standings since all games may not be made up really makes this an uninteresting season to me and I love baseball.
The idea of a taking two weeks to isolate and then have teams in a bubble for a 30 team playoff really make it less of a great feeling for any team winning the World Series. I am for scrapping this season and starting fresh in 2021.
I hate the artificial nature of the starting the tenth (or maybe 8th…) inning with a runner automatically placed on second too. Other than being a crap way to end a game (why not just have a 3 batter per team home run contest instead? Or line up your remaining unused pitchers and see if they can throw a baseball through a plastic clown’s open mouth from 75 feet?), it does not meet the ultimate goal – ending games quicker.
Sure, a larger percentage of games ended in the 10th inning that in games where the RoS start is not used… but the tenth inning takes 40 minutes to play.
If MLB wants to make games faster, change the 30 seconds between pitch rule to 20-25 and ENFORCE IT. And stop letting batters leave the box after every pitch. Their sponsors will have to live with their wristband and elbow pad logos not being perfectly displayed on camera for each pitch.
The Expos wouldn’t be able to play in Montreal (no travel to Canada without quarantine), and wouldn’t have any players. I suppose you could put the Sugar Land Skeeters in tricolor hats, though.
That’s a great idea
No comments on the arena pictures. I like that all the jersey wearing folks are channeled into one entrance. Optimistic pictures as trees are full of leaves, no jackets – somebody thinks the Islanders are playing in June. Which explains the excitement – everyone standing, raising hands in the air because there is a pass to the slot. Even the people in the foreground – who are looking away are standing and cheering.
Looking at the Tampa Bay situation if they proposals are due by January 2021 and it will take most of 2021 to review them and pick one you then have environmental studies, lining up financing, etc. So you’re looking at the end of 2024 before any groundbreaking can take place. At that point there are 3 seasons left of the lease. Considering a new stadium would take 3 years to build they can either make a deal that year or negotiate an out.