I definitely enjoyed getting my fix of games this weekend, and although my Twins flopped on Saturday I'm pretty happy with how things went. Other things that I noted - the Dodgers are angry, the Orioles have life, the Nats look hungover, Bryce Harper's hair is at a next level, nobody followed the social distancing protocols (lots of high-fives, spitting, etc), and now Florida is trying to screw with an already abbreviated season with 1/3 of the team now with confirmed COVID cases.
As happy as I was to see the return I'm quickly realizing that my earlier prediction that this was only going to last for a couple weeks now seems more likely.
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The O's are leading the east... Maybe for 1 day. But they are on top!!!!
I'll admit I gave them up for dead after Opening Day. It will be short lived but I'll enjoy while it lasts even if its just for a day.
If someone said to me last year the Orioles would be leading the AL East in late July, I'd have laughed at them.
...then again there's been a lot of unforseen developments this year...
Interesting to see what happens with the teams the Marlins played in their first few games. I don't think baseball is going to last very long this season.
Yeah if an outbreak occurs on another team I think the season is toast. If MLB couldn't figure out a way to play, football at any level seems impossible at this point.
The Phillies are quarantining and testing. Their game tonight against the Yankees is postponed.
Agreed. Unfortunately, after this event with the Marlins I have even lower confidence for any of the upcoming sports to last very long (or if the CFB season even happens at all). NBA has the best shot.
2020 sports in the US outside the NBA bubble:
NHL has a shot as well.
MLS has been successful once they kicked out the bad apples and sent them home. (Maybe Miami should receive the same...)
Not gonna lie, it was great to have live sports on again. Shooty Hoops this week and hockey next week, so great
RIP MLB. Within the first weekend of games there is an outbreak. This was supposed to be the model of test, trace, and isolate and we failed. Korea is now letting fans attend games. Japan has had some positive tests but no outbreaks since starting early June.
Well when the Marlins let players with known positive tests play anyway this is what we get.
ya got a citation for that claim?
https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2020/07/eight-marlins-players-two-coaches...
"game was played after three players tested positive" is not at all the same as "three players tested positive and then those players played in the game after they knew they were positive".
without knowing who the infected players are, it's irresponsible to assume that the Marlins organization and players conspired to circumvent MLB policy and all logic and knowingly play a game while actively infected.
https://www.miamiherald.com/sports/mlb/miami-marlins/article244449472.html
I thought people would click on the hyperlinked stories wasn't trying to link a bunch of different sources in one post.
Come on, man. Four players are named: Urena, Cooper, Ramirez, Alfaro
The original article you shared doesn't say they played on Sunday. The Miami Herald article followup you shared doesn't even say they played on Sunday.
If you look at a box score and a game recap, it sure looks like none of them played on Sunday.
https://www.espn.com/mlb/recap?gameId=401225713
I'm not sure comparing a 30 team league that is traversing the country to two leagues taking place in countries the size of New Jersey is much of a fair comparison, although it is extremely disappointing. Baseball had by far the most publicized issues getting a testing regime implemented when teams started reporting, which I guess should have been a bigger red flag.
I think some sort of regional bubble would have made the most sense, where each division has a host stadium they play all their home games in and only travels to the mirror leagues stadium in the opposing league.
The modified grapefruit and Cactus League plans they thought about first would have been much better idea.
Players nixed it almost immediately. Re-watching the ESPN 30for30 with Sammy and Mark going dinger after dinger, really was the last time baseball just captivated the country. There's a spark here and there, but between Selig, steroids, overpaid players, and just plain hubris, the league can't get out of its way.
Yet sadly, this is all about TV contracts, and ESPN/Fox pushed for a season no matter what it looked like.
Yeah. They nixed it early, when the season was projected as 4-5 months. When they shortened to 60 games, they should have pushed for the bubble concept. No way they are getting through the season like this. Miami is going to be without 40% of their lineup for 14 days. Hopefully it doesn't spread to other teams...if it does, the last team to field a lineup will be declared World Champs :)
MLB has the same policy as NASCAR for determining when a participant can return to competition after a positive test, and Jimmie Johnson was cleared to return only 4 days after his positive test. The time it takes for someone's immune system to eradicate the disease depends on a number of factors and we don't even know what most of those factors are yet.
CDC guideline is 14 days. That's what was reported the MLB was using.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/07/10/nascars-jimmie-johnson-race-sunday-amid-questions-over-positive-coronavirus-test/
https://www.autoweek.com/racing/nascar/a33278160/johnson-aims-to-keep-perspective-in-check-after-covid-19-experience/
Yes, but the official MLB policy is "two negative tests in a row and 72 hours with no fever". Pretty much identical to NASCAR.
https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2020-06-24/how-will-mlb-operations-...
Also, Johnson isolated at his home, yes, but was cleared for competition the Tuesday after his positive test results came in on a Friday, not "10 days". Expect that some Marlins players might be reinstated later this week.
For those hoping we see any football this year, these developments for baseball aren't good at all.
College athletics for the 2020-21 academic year are very very much in peril right now.
Is there a way a college or athletic conference would be held liable for an athlete catching the virus and having long term symptoms, thus affecting a possible professional career (specifically this would be football, basketball and baseball where future contracts can be very large). Would draft insurance policies pay out for the football/basketball players that get sick from the virus?
If colleges could be held liable, I don't know how they would willingly try to have sports.
Live sports is going to be a shit show every second until a "positive covid19 test" is treated like a positive flu test or positive shingles test. Until that moment, it's going to be impossible for these leagues to operate as normal- even without fans.
And hopefully when its treated like the flu or shingles, its because we also have a vaccine like we do for those two and a positive test isn't a contact-tracing nightmare.
Hmm... What's unfair about the outbreak within Miami organization with any KBO or NPB organization. The team organizations are the similarly sized and should have ability to test, trace and isolate. It is clear that an individual (or a few individuals) of the Marlin organiztaion became infected and transmitted to the other members of the organization. That intrasquad transmission outbreak has nothing to do with travel or population size. In fact, Miami has only traveled to Atlanta and Philadelphia, thus similar to KBO or NPB travels. In addition, the population densities of the Korean and Japanese cities are greater than Miami, Atlanta, or Philadelphia. It is true that initial infection is likely due to the greater amount of transmission per capita in the U.S., but the failure is the lack of identification and isolation of initial infection prior to the intrasquad outbreak. There also seems to be a failure in determining intrasquad contacts and isolating those contacts while they were tested.
I'm being partially sarcastic, but just the fact that they are based in Florida is probably enough to cause this outbreak. The location, coupled with clear evidence throughout baseball this weekend that the players dont seem to give a damn about following the distancing protocols ON CAMERA, tells me 1) this was inevitable, and 2) we should expect more in the immediate future.
I haven't followed the protocols MLB has put in place too closely. But I'm surprised with the stands being empty that they didn't try to put some sort of expanded bench area in the stands. Lots more room to spread out.
They did. Very few of the players / coaches actually took advantage of it. I think the only players I saw this weekend do that were Scherzer and another Nats pitcher (might have been Stras) - they setup in the shade behind home plate and watched most of the game from there.
Off day pitchers are required to not be in the dugout.
this is fine.
the whole team needs to quarantine or get voted off the MLB island. At this point I would be happy with EPL rules and the team with the most wins at the end of the regular season wins the championship.
Marlins are shutdown at least through this weekend. The Nats also took a team vote today and decided not to make the trip to Miami (believe this was ahead of the MLB announcement). No word on how the rescheduling will cascade throughout the league.
It should be easy. Can't field a team, forfeit the game. Every team has 67 days to play 60 games.
More cases popping up - The Cardinals just reported 2 cases right after their road trip to Minnesota. Willing to bet we're going to see some positive cases pop-up for the Twins and the Indians in the next couple days.
I blame the Astros
If "positive cases" are not decoupled from "showstopper" the season will be over in 3 weeks.
I haven't seen much evidence that it's spreading between teams. It would hurt television revenue which is why they won't do it but it would be prudent to play all games while the sun is out in outdoor stadiums.
Aaron Judge is a bad bad man. Homers in 5 straight games.
My Yanks looking HUNGRY!!! 🧹👨🏽⚖️
*Insert same meme but with Yankees here*
Good thing we were cleared of that violation 🙄
🥱Here's the real story🥱
In case you were interested in knowing
What about that letter they are to scared too say what it was🤔
All I can disclose are the facts that are out there; however, I did find an article that stated the following:
So...guess we'll see; I was more so responding to that specific allegation, that was disputed quite awhile ago.
Angel Hernandez doing what Angel Hernandez does best
However... I've seen enough of Angel's masterpieces and this one was hardly a masterpiece. Not getting called out looking was drilled in to me as an 8yo... if its close, you better be swinging.
Apparently the baseball world is in an uproar over last night's actions from Fernando Tatis Jr.
boom
My thoughts - good on Tatis for not letting up. The only thing I would be upset with if I were on the team is that he missed the take sign. If I'm the Padres manager or pitching coach my gut reaction is "Sweet! I can get another pitcher some late inning work without having to worry about blowing a lead."
Tatis Jr is great. His coach is a bum.
I'm loving that he doesn't let up. He's killing it for my FBB team this year.
Does he get a bottle of SBR's for hitting the SBR bottle sign?
People getting paid millions of dollars to play a game get upset when people play it too competitively...
Sorry, but the whole "unwritten rules of baseball" thing is silly to me. Don't want a guy to crush a grand slam in a game they're comfortably ahead in on a 3-0 pitch? I suggest not tossing a fat one down the middle of the plate then. Or don't throw three balls beforehand.
Also, it's not like the Rangers gave up, they scored in the bottom of that inning. The game was likely over, but scoring four or five runs in an inning isn't impossible, and then the game is close again. It's a dumb one.
Kinda ironic that the Rangers manager was complaining about running up the score when we're almost at the 13th anniversary of this happening.
I had to go back and look at some of the play by play and for the most part the Rangers were swinging away once the game was out of hand. With the exception of a 4-pitch walk to Kinsler late in the game they were either taking a first pitch strike or going up there swinging to get the ball in play and end the game early. The balls just kept finding a hole and the Os couldn't get outs. Also, Nelson Cruz had an awful day at the plate - 2/7 with a double and 3 TBs. Surprising, but he was still early in his career with the Rangers and hadn't yet turned in to the regular HR threat.
Also weird is how the 8-9 batters for Texas had 4 HR and 14 RBI.
That Baltimore pitching staff was so bad that not even Leo Mazzone could help them.
Holy crap. That grand slam was the first of four consecutive games of grand slams by San Diego. First time a team has done that in the 151 years of MLB history.
Huge yikes today from Thom Brennaman on a hot mic describing Kansas City as "one of the f*g capitals of the world" during game 1 of a doubleheader. And then he casually calls a home run during his apology.
[mod edit: the offensive bit]
Big time oof. This is unacceptable. Even if you're someone who thinks this way (sadly) then you should at least know better than to say it on the job if your job is public speaking.
he's been suspended (link)
and Fox took him off the broadcast team for the season.
Everyone that had 3 teams from the AL Central making the playoffs go ahead and speak-up
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[silence]
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I'm more hopeful now that a first round series featuring the Twins against the Yankees can be avoided.