MLB Commissioner: We are Playing, but Players Need to be Better

Pro Sports during the faux pandemic is a joke!

Why bother with the cardboard cutouts in the stands and piped in crowd noise?

Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred remains confident the 2020 season can continue, telling ESPN’s Karl Ravech on Saturday that “there is no reason to quit now” despite positive coronavirus tests that have led to the postponement of 17 games in 10 days.

“We are playing……….The players need to be better, but I am not a quitter in general and there is no reason to quit now. We have had to be fluid, but it is manageable.”
Rob Manfred
MLB Commissioner

Manfred acknowledged Saturday that not every team might play all 60 games this season, and winning percentage could be used to determine playoff teams.

“We’ve got to be flexible on that……..Look, this is one of the reasons that we revisited the issue off the expanded playoffs. If it turns out that some guys play 60, some guys play 58, they have this new thing called winning percentage. We can sort that out.”
Rob Manfred
MLB Commissioner

Manfred’s comments follow the postponement of this weekend’s St. Louis Cardinals–Milwaukee Brewers series. The postponement was caused by four positive COVID-19 tests among the Cardinals, including one player, according to ESPN and multiple reports.

Manfred on Friday told MLB Players Association executive director Tony Clark that if the sport doesn’t do a better job of managing the coronavirus, it could shut down for the season, sources familiar with the conversation told ESPN’s Jeff Passan.

“It is what the public health experts have been saying from the beginning about this, that there is no one big magic fix.”
Rob Manfred
MLB Commissioner

“The protocols are a series of little things that people need to do. We’ve had some problems. In order to be better, it’s another series of little things. I think it’s peer pressure. I think it’s players taking personal responsibility. I think it’s the union helping us like Tony Clark helped us yesterday. And I think it’s us managing more aggressively.”

The league and players recognize the coming days pose a critical juncture following the positive tests with the Cardinals and an outbreak among the Miami Marlins in which 21 members of the organization tested positive for COVID-19.

Manfred told The Associated Press that MLB knows which player introduced COVID-19 into the Marlins’ clubhouse.

The Marlins on Saturday reported no new positive tests, and MLB said the current plan is for the team to resume play with a four-game series against the Orioles from Tuesday through Thursday, with one doubleheader, in Baltimore. The Marlins will serve as home team for two of those games.