Braves Clippings Tuesday, May 26, 2020 Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Six former Braves weigh in on issues around starting season

By Tim Tucker, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Six former Braves players will participate in a televised discussion of issues surrounding a possible start of the pandemic-delayed MLB season.

Tom Glavine, , , , Peter Moylan and Nick Green will be featured on “The Return of Baseball: A Fox Sports Roundtable,” an hour-long show that will air Saturday at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. on Fox Sports Southeast.

The discussion, covering player safety, collective bargaining and other topics, will be moderated by Braves broadcasters , Kelly Crull and Jerome Jurenovich. The six former players also have roles on Braves telecasts, including pregame and postgame shows, but it remains unclear when games will begin. Negotiations are ongoing between MLB and the players’ union about a possible start of the season in early July if financial, logistical and health concerns can be worked out.

In advance video clips of Saturday’s show provided by FSSE, Francoeur said he’s “hoping eventually there’s (so) much money involved from TV deals and other stuff, hopefully postseason money, that they can come to some sort of agreement.”

Francoeur added: “Thirty million Americans are out of work, and they don’t want to hear a bunch of millionaires and billionaires griping at each other about money.”

Glavine said there is “an equal amount of pressure” on both sides to reach a deal on the economics of starting the season.

“If we don’t have baseball, baseball is going to lose, and it’s going to lose more than it did after the strike in 1994,” Glavine said. “If this thing falls apart because of economics, I think that what happened after the strike in 1994, with people swearing off the game, it’s going to be even more so this time if it happened again.”

Glavine also said he “would not be the least bit surprised” if some players with preexisting medical conditions “opt out” of playing this season. “And if it’s the case, then I think their teammates need to be supportive of them,” he said.

The Athletic

Griffey a Pirate? Chipper a Tiger? The MLB draft rule that changed history

By Stephen J. Nesbitt

What if I told you that, if not for a now-defunct MLB draft rule, Ken Griffey Jr. would be wearing a Pirates cap on his Hall of Fame plaque in Cooperstown?

And that never would have been a Mariner, either?

And that would’ve gone to Detroit, not Atlanta?

“Heck yeah,” Jones, the Hall of Fame third baseman, said when presented with this hypothetical earlier this week. “I play what-if games all the time.”

If operated its draft back then the way it does today, all of that might be true. The Pirates, by virtue of having baseball’s worst record in 1986, would have held the rights to the first pick in 1987 and selected Griffey — the kid born in Donora, Pa. He’d start between and Bobby Bonilla in one of the great outfields the game has ever known. Griffey may have been the missing link. Maybe the Pirates would have won a World Series in 1990, 1991 or 1992.

The Tigers, MLB’s worst team in 1989, would have had a chance to draft Jones at No. 1 in 1990. He’d break into the big leagues and round out a Tigers infield that already included Cecil Fielder, Lou Whittaker and Alan Trammell.

“Always enjoyed my time in Detroit,” Jones remarked. “I’m sure we would have done pretty well. I’m not saying I would’ve played all 19 years with (the Tigers) like I did Atlanta, but … it would have been cool to think about being teammates with the Scherzers and Verlanders and Miggys and Brandon Inges.

“I would have loved to play at old Tiger Stadium. I never got the chance.”

Just like Rodriguez never called home. That’s because the top pick in 1993 didn’t go to the dead-last Dodgers. So, when Rodriguez batted .358 as a rookie in 1996, it did nothing to keep Los Angeles from another NLDS sweep. That lineup had Mike Piazza and Raul Mondesi, but no A-Rod.

Of course, none of those hypotheticals happened. The Pirates lost three consecutive NLCS, lost Bonds, and continued losing for two decades. The Tigers fell apart. And the Dodgers didn’t escape the NLDS until 2008.

All of that is due in part to a small yet significant draft rule retired 15 years ago. It stipulated that the No. 1 pick alternate each year between leagues. The NL drafted first in even years; the AL was first in odd years. Take Griffey’s draft, for example. The NL had drafted first in 1986 — Pittsburgh took — and the top pick ping-ponged back to the AL in 1987. The lucky losers? The Mariners, despite having a better record than the Pirates.

This rule, alternating draft order by league, lived for 41 years. It shaped the course of baseball history, and then it quietly went away.

“I did not know about that rule,” Jones said, then laughed. “Not until now.”

“I’ve been trying like crazy to track this down,” Allan Simpson, the man who wrote the book on the draft, said the other day. “I couldn’t find anything.”

After sifting through newspaper archives and two years of editions, Simpson simply couldn’t put a finger on why this specific draft rule was eliminated. “For the life of me, I can’t remember exactly what triggered it.” But Simpson could whittle down to when the rule changed. It was 2004.

The agenda for the owners’ meetings in Scottsdale, Ariz., was packed. Over two days, commissioner Bud Selig and club owners needed to discuss Frank McCourt’s proposed $430 million purchase of the Dodgers; set a timeline for finding the Expos’ new home; levy mandatory suspensions for players who falsified their identities; consider ’s request to lift his lifetime ban; formulate plans for a baseball World Cup; weigh the merits of beginning a baseball-only TV network; and debate whether to hold a worldwide draft.

Afterward, an Associated Press story summarized the progress (or lack) on those fronts. The final paragraphs, cut from any newspaper tight on space, announced in almost throwaway fashion that the owners had voted to ditch the alternating-leagues draft rule. Beginning in 2005, draft order would be determined by winning percentage alone, regardless of league. Few fans noticed the change.

The rule died as it had lived: an easily forgotten curiosity.

In hindsight, however, its ripple effects are evident. More often than not, the original draft-order rule resulted in the team with the worst record in the majors not drafting first, because it wasn’t their league’s turn. In fact, in 25 of the 41 drafts under that system, the worst team picked second. This impacted not only Griffey, Jones and Rodriguez but also , , Adrián González, and many other No. 1 picks.

Times the worst team picked second

To make sense of the rule change requires going back to a different time and place. The 2004 owners’ meetings came on the heels of the Tigers inflicting one of the most atrocious seasons in baseball history, losing 119 games. Yet it was an even year, and by rule the NL drafted first. So, the 98-loss Padres, with the third-worst record in the majors, leapfrogged to the first pick.

(The Padres would massively misfire on their selection. But more on that later.)

“By that point,” Simpson said, “I’m sure (the owners) probably thought, Boy, this doesn’t make sense. This whole draft is designed to reward the team with the worst record, and it’s effectively not doing that. I think the time had come.”

In baseball, the chasm between the top pick and the rest can revive or ruin a franchise. In the drafts when the worst team picked second, the total career WAR for the No. 1 pick outpaced the No. 2 pick, 747.8 to 320.2, an average of 29.9 to 12.8. For decades, the AL and NL had operated entirely separately. They were fierce rivals with their own league offices, umpires and rules regarding the DH. The two sides met in the All-Star Game and the World Series. That was it. It felt fair to both parties that the No. 1 pick would bounce back and forth. But they went even farther: Each pick in the draft alternated — odds to one league, evens to the other.

But interleague play began in 1997. The AL and NL offices merged in 2000. Today, leagues have the same rules — except for the DH, so far — and the same umpires. So why did this outdated draft-order rule exist through 2005?

“This will sound funny,” MLB.com’s Jim Callis said, “but so much of the draft was, ‘Well, that’s the way we’ve always done it.’ I think that was a big part of it.”

How much did the draft-order rule matter? Let’s have a closer look.

The very first pick:

From the start, there was disagreement between baseball’s worst team and the team that drafted first. The Mets finished at the bottom of the 1964 standings but could only watch as the Kansas City Athletics selected Monday, the college baseball player of the year, No. 1 in the inaugural draft in 1965. This was the only time the Athletics, now in Oakland, have had the first pick. Monday was a productive for the Athletics, Cubs and Dodgers — a two-time All-Star who played 19 seasons and won a World Series in 1981.

The Mets took Les Rohr. He pitched only six games in the majors.

The first Hall of Famer:

Of the three former No. 1 picks to be in the Hall of Fame, Baines was inducted most recently, in 2019, after Griffey and Jones. But Baines was drafted more than a decade before them. Truth be told, though, even if the Expos had gotten the No. 1 pick in 1977, Baines would have gone to the White Sox anyway.

“I don’t think anybody else would have taken Harold Baines No. 1,” Callis said.

Most years, there’s a fairly clear consensus on the top talent in the draft — a slam dunk. That was true in 1977: It was Bill Gullickson. The White Sox, however, targeted Baines because then-owner Bill Veeck, who had known Baines since he was young, was sure he’d be easy to sign. “They didn’t have any money,” Simpson said. “They had to go get the most sign-able guy in that small pool of players at the top.” Baines signed for $32,000, a record low for a top pick, and less than half of what Gullickson and No. 3 pick got.

The losers: Blue Jays

The alternating-leagues draft rule was the Blue Jays’ bane. Toronto is one of eight franchises to have never drafted No. 1. But not for lack of trying. They had the MLB’s worst record three times since 1965, and each time it was the NL’s turn with the first pick. Had this rule never existed, the Blue Jays could have gotten in 1978, Strawberry in 1980 and Shawon Dunston in 1982. Instead, they selected second those years and got Lloyd Moseby, Garry Harris and Augie Schmidt. (Harris and Schmidt never reached the majors.)

The Blue Jays also tied the Twins for the worst record in 1995, but picked fourth. The Pirates took at No. 1. Toronto got Billy Koch.

The winners: Mariners

Try telling the story of Seattle baseball without Griffey or Rodriguez. That’s what this rule meant to the Mariners. They were on the right side of that rule twice in six years, vaulting past the Pirates in 1987 and ahead of the Dodgers in 1993. Those two picks ushered in the best chapter in Mariners history.

After Griffey, the Pirates selected Mark Merchant. He only made it to A. The Dodgers — another team that has never had the No. 1 overall draft pick — took Darren Dreifort one pick after Rodriguez. The combined career WAR for Griffey and Rodriguez: 201.7. For Merchant and Dreifort: 7.8.

The hot-corner Hall of Famer: Chipper Jones

Jones wasn’t a slam dunk, either. The week of the 1990 draft, Jones had hardly heard from any top-four team — the Braves, Tigers, Phillies or White Sox.

“I was totally expecting to go to Pittsburgh at five or Seattle at six,” Jones said. “I knew Seattle wasn’t going to let me fall past them.”

Two days before the draft, Atlanta came calling for Jones. They had their choice. Jones figures the Tigers, drafting second, might have taken Tony Clark even if they had the first pick. Many felt Todd Van Poppel was the most talented player in the draft pool, but with signing concerns he fell to No. 14.

The hometown kid: Joe Mauer The 2001 draft was this little draft rule’s time to shine. The Twins, tied for the fourth-worst record in the majors, jumped to the front of the line. They had their pick of five premier prospects: , , Dewon Brazelton, and Mauer. Prior seemed like a sure thing. “(Stephen) Strasburg before Strasburg,” Callis said. But clubs were fed up with how signing demands had escalated in the late 1990s. The Twins, who have failed to sign more first-rounders than any other team, couldn’t risk losing Prior.

“It was just too much money for them to commit to,” Callis said.

So, Minnesota locked in on the local kid: Mauer. He was no slouch. One of the best high-school catching prospects ever to enter the draft, Mauer also happened to be from right down the road in St. Paul, Minn.

“As it turned out,” Simpson said. “Mauer was a hell of a choice.”

The very last (and the very worst) pick: Matt Bush

The 2004 draft was the last time the team with the worst record picked second. And it didn’t matter. The Padres, at No. 1, “screwed that up about eight ways,” Callis said. To save money, Simpson explained, the Padres scouted very few players. They paid almost no attention to , the stud starter from Old Dominion. As the Padres front office debated , and Stephen Drew, then-owner John Moores balked at their contract demands. So, the Padres scouts piled into a car and went to watch the San Diego high school Bush, who had indicated he would sign for less to stay local.

Bush was drafted No. 1 but never played for the Padres. After running into a series of personal and legal issues, Bush made his major league debut — as a — for the Rangers in 2016.

Meanwhile, the Tigers took Verlander. Their 119 losses were rewarded.

“They got the right guy even with the No. 2 pick,” Simpson said.

Now imagine an alternate universe in which this draft rule was still in play, that the owners voted to keep it in 2004. Why change it? That’s the way it’s always been. So, the draft is ordered as it always was: Alternating annually, pick by pick, between the AL and NL. How might recent baseball history be rewritten?

It may come as no surprise that one team would by far have benefited the most.

The Mariners.

What if draft order still alternated?

Félix Hernández, and Strasburg would have been a nice top three.

And Tigers fans, still smarting from the realization that this old draft-order rule stole Jones from them 30 years ago, would be furious to learn that the rule also would have taken Mize and the 2020 No. 1 pick — likely Arizona State’s Spencer Torkelson — from them, too. In this alternate universe, the Marlins would draft first for just the second time in franchise history (González, 2000).

You can make the argument that the original draft-order rule disincentivizes tanking. In the 15 years since the rule was removed, three teams have held the No. 1 pick for consecutive years — Rays 2007-08; Nationals 2009-10; Astros 2012-14 — which had never happened before. If teams had no chance at back-to-back top picks, maybe losing wouldn’t be so appealing as it is today.

Callis, however, argues that the introduction of draft bonus pools became an even larger impetus to tank than the new draft-order rule.

“Let’s say (the top pick) alternated,” Callis said. “The Astros wouldn’t have had the No. 1 pick three years in a row. But they’re still under the bonus pool system. You still would have wanted to have the highest pool possible.”

So, Callis added, even drafting second or third a few years in a row is still a significant advantage for clubs. Simpson agreed. There’s no certainty tanking will work, but some teams certainly still will try. Because whether the draft is ordered by a forgotten rule or by wins and losses, this much is clear: There’s gold toward the top of the draft. Just ask the Mariners.

“The baseball draft is littered over the years with hits and misses, even with the top picks,” Simpson said. “There’s no sure things. But if you happen to on the right guy, that’s a franchise-changing development.”

MLB plans to offer an alternative proposal to players on salaries

By and Evan Drellich

Major League Baseball will not propose a full revenue-sharing system to determine player salaries for the 2020 season, people with knowledge of the league’s thinking told The Athletic. In a scheduled meeting with the Players Association on Tuesday, the league plans to offer an alternative proposal, leaving the union with a potential choice: to hold the league to the prorated salaries the two sides negotiated in March, or accommodate the owners’ desire for a second, possibly percentage-based cut in some other fashion.

Deferring 2020 salary might be the choice the union is most willing to accept. Meanwhile, some player agents are open to pay reductions if the trade-off is financial protection for players this offseason, which some fear might otherwise be harsh for free agents and arbitration-eligible players.

To this point, the union has been adamant it will not accept further pay reductions. The players, however, have internally discussed the possibility of deferrals to address the owners’ cash-flow problem, a source with knowledge of the discussions said.

Although the parties agreed in March to defer draft-pick bonuses, the league would not necessarily be open to deferring major-league salaries, believing it only would extend the financial pressure on clubs into the future, rather than address the problem.

Length of season is another potential bargaining chip.

The players would make more money for every regular-season game played under the current arrangement and therefore could ask the league for an increase from the proposed 82 games. But the league says unless players take another cut, it will lose money for every additional game. The eventual opening of parks to fans might improve the financial picture, but the COVID-19 pandemic makes such revenue uncertain. The league also prefers a shorter schedule to enhance the chances of playing the postseason, when greater revenues are assured.

Ultimately, nothing forces players to take a further pay cut, and nothing forces the owners to start the season — a potential stalemate that seems to provide the impetus to a new negotiation. The resolution, however, remains unclear. And some player agents fear that preserving prorated salaries only would lead to a bigger problem in the offseason, when the owners might cut spending dramatically following their losses.

The union wanted proof of the owners’ financial distress, and MLB took more than a week to answer the union’s request for financial documents. A reply came Friday night, but sources said the league did not respond in full. It is unclear whether the union considers the information the league sent sufficient for its economists to make a determination about the league’s claims before June 1, an informal deadline for negotiations to be completed if the season is to start by early July.

“There isn’t sufficient time for the PA to verify the financial claims of MLB,” agent Seth Levinson of the ACES agency said. “So, MLB doesn’t just seek further salary reductions from the players but also their blind faith.

“Players must have some assurance that after the season that MLB will not abuse the blind faith extended to them. Based on MLB’s history, it is very reasonable to expect that clubs will eviscerate free agents and arbitration-eligible players to recoup their losses. Any agreement must protect the players heading into 2021, and that will require MLB to demonstrate its good faith.”

For now, 2020 pay remains the primary topic of conversation. The sport’s collective bargaining agreement expires Dec. 1, 2021, and sources on both sides note there is insufficient time to work out a deal comprehensive enough to address all the issues that await.

Not all agents view the ’20-21 offseason ominously, believing some clubs will remain competitive in the marketplace to inject excitement coming off a down year. Some agents, however, believe a concession on salary might be beneficial if the league agreed in exchange to incentivize team spending this winter. To this point, there is no indication top union officials share their thinking.

Union membership would benefit from making the designated hitter permanent in the National League; hitters who serve as DHs generally are better paid than, say, the last reliever on a pitching staff. The parties also could agree upon a variety of methods to motivate spending, from setting maximum percentages on payroll reduction to adjusting free-agent compensation to easing luxury-tax restrictions on high-revenue teams.

Yet, even if the union is willing to trade off a portion of 2020 salaries for some other gain, the commissioner’s office might be resistant. Economists on both sides are capable of estimating the financial impact of most changes to the CBA. As much as the league might want to save money this year, it probably would not give up something of significantly greater value in return. And for the players, a reduction of even 15 percent on top of their prorated salaries would amount to about $300 million.

The players who have been outspoken about requiring the league to honor its initial agreement might perceive weakness in any compromise by the union, leading to internal friction. Potential divisions also exist among owners between those who are insistent on another salary reduction and those who are more eager to begin play.

Perhaps the simplest way to ensure the owners spend would be to institute a salary “floor” that would require teams to maintain a minimum payroll. Leagues typically accept salary minimums, however, only where there is an accompanying maximum — and maximums are the hallmarks of a salary-cap system.

The players’ opposition to a concept it equated to a salary cap is why the league ultimately decided not to propose a 50-50 revenue split with the players for 2020.

MLB appeared intent on introducing such a plan until union head Tony Clark told The Athletic two weeks ago, “A system that restricts player pay based on revenues is a salary cap, period.” Although the league disagreed with that assessment, the commissioner’s office seemed to realize further pursuit would be fruitless. Some form of revenue sharing might exist in a new proposal, but it will not be the central mechanism for determining player compensation. Clark and commissioner Rob Manfred spoke to each other on Thursday, sources said. The sides continue to negotiate health and safety protocols. Both the union and the clubs sent back suggested revisions to the league office. The greatest differences between the players and owners, for now, remain economic.

Whatever the solutions, the parties probably need to keep them as simple as possible, considering they might only have this week and next to reach agreement without delaying the start of a second beyond the mid-June target date.

To this point, much of the talk between MLB and the union on economics has occurred publicly rather than privately. This is the week when actual progress is required.

ESPN

How the coronavirus is forever changing the way MLB connects to fans

IT BEGAN WITH the hype video that was supposed to introduce the 2020 on . Organist Dieter Ruehle followed by playing the national anthem and "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" from his home piano. Third baseman Justin Turner, closer Kenley Jansen and manager shared updates on their suddenly monotonous lives. Comedian George Lopez cracked jokes at the ' expense and country musician Brad Paisley wore a Dodgers sweatshirt that described the team as " Champs."

Along the way, the Dodgers' first live Zoom event provided its fair share of predictable glitches -- ringing cellphones, awkward silences and buffering videos, one of which distorted an uplifting message from Vin Scully. , the Dodgers' play-by-play voice pressed into virtual hosting duty, cringed through some of the technical difficulties. He thought social media would be as unforgiving as usual. He was wrong.

"The people appreciated whatever we were able to do, even if the video was skipping a little bit, or there were audio issues, or somebody dropped out at some point," Davis said. "The general sense was that it was like, 'So what?' There was an appreciation, it seems like, from the fans that there was something baseball-related to be able to cling onto and distract them for a night."

The Dodgers initially planned to host 1,000 fans at their first "Zoom Party" on April 27. They ultimately opened it up to 11,000 people. Over the next couple of weeks, the guest list increased to 12,000 and then 15,000, proving two key points about this unimaginable period: Teams are trying anything and everything to fill a massive void amid the coronavirus pandemic, and their fans are here for it -- a dynamic that could change the fan- engagement experience forever.

There have been re-airings of old postseason games, broadcaster calls of home movies, training tips from coaches, bedtime stories from players and bracket-style tournaments for items such as jerseys and bobbleheads, all in an effort to create content in a time when baseball's main content pipeline -- live games -- is shut off.

Ryan Zimmerman interviewed Dr. Anthony Fauci, a diehard fan of the . Francisco Cervelli taught viewers how to make focaccia. director of behavioral science Ryan Maid hosted "Mindfulness Mondays" to provide tips on living in the moment. The offered instructions for creating games out of items in one's sock drawer. And former Astros infielder Geoff Blum hosted a series called "Feel Good Stories For The Heart" in hopes of providing some much-needed positivity.

Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association also teamed up to create an MLB The Show Players League, where big leaguers went head- to-head in video game matchups that were livestreamed on Twitch and broadcast on television during the virtual playoffs, culminating in a final showdown between ace and ace that aired on ESPN.

"We want to give everybody sort of a relief from what's going on, and if we can help them and we can entertain them, we've succeeded," Dodgers chief marketing officer Lon Rosen said of his own team's strategy. "We're in a really difficult time right now. We all feel like we're gonna come out the other end and life will come back to some normalcy, but until then, we wanna make sure that we're connected to our fans and our fans are connected to us. And that's our mission."

In pursuit of that, the Dodgers arranged for their director of player performance, Brandon McDaniel, to guide fans through in-home workouts twice a week. They handed a smartphone to Ellen Kershaw so that she could record her husband, Clayton, flipping pancakes and playing Pop-A-Shot. And they utilized Ross Stripling, their agreeable right-handed pitcher, for an interview series with some of his teammates. Davis himself has hosted his own cooking show and also started a podcast with his broadcast partner, Orel Hershiser. The response floored him.

"We've had multiple people tell us that it brought them to tears to hear us, multiple people tell us that it's the best part of their week when that comes out, and their favorite thing during the quarantine," Davis said of the podcast, called "Off Air." "Man, we're just trying to have a fun conversation. We started it realizing the void that everybody was feeling with no baseball, but I don't think we fully appreciated how big that void was." MARCO GONZALES LEFT Arizona shortly after MLB effectively closed spring training complexes on March 15. He hopped in the car with his wife and their dog and drove 1,400 miles to his home near T-Mobile Park, returning to Seattle -- the country's first coronavirus epicenter -- for the first time in more than a month.

Gonzales, the left-hander announced as the ' Opening Day starter less than a week earlier, was struck by how a bustling city could feel so desolate. Parks were empty, traffic was nonexistent, stores had shuttered, and the few people he saw, usually at the local supermarket, dressed as if they were "going into surgery." The anxiety was palpable, omnipresent, and it helped spur Gonzales into action. He donated blood, partnered with a local hunger-relief agency and stepped outside of his comfort zone to help entertain a populace desperate for levity.

The latter morphed into a weekly interview podcast called "Inside Corner," which Gonzales co-hosts alongside Mariners broadcaster through the team's YouTube channel. Catcher Tom Murphy and fellow starters Taijuan Walker and have made up the first three guests. Murphy spoke from his dining room, which features a 400-pound black bear he snagged on a hunting trip. Dunn, now 6-foot-2, revealed he was shorter than his 4-foot-11 grandmother when he entered high school. Walker estimated owning 400 pairs of sneakers.

"I miss baseball, I miss that interaction with my teammates," Gonzales said. "And I think the goal of this, ultimately, is for fans to get to know us a little bit better away from the field, and to feel like they're a little more connected to us."

It's part of an ironic twist in all this -- a time that is keeping fans from baseball is also allowing them, in some respects, to feel more connected to those who play it. During the season, their time is precious. During the offseason, their time is sacred. But now athletes are stuck at home waiting this out, with unkempt hair and a dwindling supply of toilet paper, just like the rest of us. To pass the time, many have offered rare glimpses into their personal lives and have seemingly become more willing to reveal their true personalities. Gonzales has acted as a willing tour guide.

"The guys that I've dealt with, they want people to get to know them as people," Gonzales said. "Because a lot of times when we're on the field, we're in a mindset, we're in a mentality, that is rare to us as a person. We're in a competitive, testosterone-driven mindset, whereas right now, when we're stuck at home, and we have a chance to talk to each other, it's a lot different communication. And I think that people will hopefully see that."

Kevin Martinez has been overseeing the Mariners' marketing efforts for the past quarter-century. Four days after MLB suspended its season, Martinez led a meeting that served as a brainstorming session for how the team could pivot in its content strategy and fill an unprecedented void in a reeling city. Martinez saw it as "an opportunity to innovate and think differently."

It led to a hype video of home movies, a series of tutorials from Mariners coaches, an MLB The Show tournament pitting fans against players, and Gonzales' podcast.

"Seattle has been one of the most affected by this, and one of the first for sure," Gonzales said. "We're trying to get behind the notion that we'll be one of the first to overcome it and really show the rest of the country what it looks like. Right now, all we can do is try to fill everybody up with some optimism, put some good content out there, and try to just give people that hope that we're gonna get back to normal as soon as we can."

BY NATURE OF their status in local communities, sports teams can often serve as information hubs for regions. The , for example, represent the baseball team for all six states in the New England region, making Twitter -- where the team has more than 6.1 million followers -- an ideal platform to distribute factually verified information regarding the pandemic. Kelsey Doherty, senior manager of digital media for the Red Sox, says the team has kept in touch with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and the State House to stay up to date on the best official safety measures.

"It's a little nerve-wracking every time I put out any of that messaging, because especially early on, things were changing so rapidly about what was or wasn't good for you or how you're supposed to go about things," Doherty said. "We were linking a lot to the Mass Department of Public Health, but we're also trying to put the Red Sox spin on it. This weekend we put out, 'How far is 6 feet really?' And it's like, 'It's one Rafael Devers away.'"

The Red Sox are far from the only team to use its social media accounts to pitch in. Zimmerman's interview with Fauci, via the Nats' Facebook page, delved into plans for slowly and safely restarting the economy. The Colorado Rockies are one club that sponsored a mask-making project, reaching out online to distribute free team-branded masks to front-line workers. Luke Voit connected with medical staff at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. The have been holding Phone Call Fridays, when members of the team check in on fans and first responders.

There have been other notable effects. With no games on the calendar for the near future, each team's social media account now represents the primary connection clubs have with fans on a daily basis. Typically at this point in the regular season, an internationally iconic team like the Yankees is focused on building hype around the club, selling individual game tickets and targeting tourists who might be coming into New York. Stephi Blank, senior manager of digital and social strategy for the Yankees, says the pandemic has flipped the team's social focus upside down.

"Especially when thinking about targeting individual game ticket buyers, tourism in New York City is something that is a massive industry, and talking with our colleagues at Broadway and others, you see that so much of the individual game, the individual ticket buyers, come from people who are outside of New York who don't live there," Blank said. "That had been a big focus of ours prior to this, but New York has been the epicenter, and we've been focusing a lot more on our local fans."

With no team to root for or games to play, teams are reframing their social media presence to think about fandom as a lifestyle. "It's new territory," Doherty said. "I always joke that I am so grateful that I work in sports because our content can change day to day based on a win or a loss or who had a big night, and now suddenly I'm in this unchartered territory and everyone in sports is, where it's like suddenly we aren't dependent on that and we're dependent on our history, the lifestyle, the fan base and the culture around the team."

THE LACK OF day-to-day, game-centric content leaves more room to experiment. The Yankees have dabbled in more player personality-driven content, posting intentionally lo-fi workout videos from the likes of Giancarlo Stanton and Luis Severino, shot in vertical video on an iPhone. Yankees head of communications Jason Zillo says the lack of wins and losses allowed baseball's most traditional brand to let loose and have some fun.

"[Player-personality content] is not only a neat concept, but I think this has legs to live long beyond the pandemic," Zillo said. "The thing that constantly is a push and a pull during a baseball season is that games matter so much. And you have to temper 'fun' things up against the fact that every day, there's a game that you're trying to win at all costs. There has to be a measure of caution. If you've lost six of eight games, my first mindset isn't, 'Let's do something fun.' It's like, 'Let's kind of scale back and then when we've won six of eight, then maybe we can push more of the fun stuff.'"

Baseball is unique among sports in its challenge of creating inclusive, compelling social media content. The schedule is arduous -- nearly every single day, often for about 10 hours, from the middle of February until at least the end of September -- and the culture can often feel repressive. Marketers have mostly found players to be less motivated to promote themselves, both because of the volume of their workload and the guaranteed nature of their contracts. Teams, in some respects, have taken a relatively conservative approach on their digital platforms.

But maybe that'll be different now.

"It has been a challenging time," Martinez, the Mariners' senior VP of marketing, said, "but it's been a time for innovation, and a great opportunity to create fans with our players in ways we haven't explored before."

While baseball has been slow to adapt to the new age of social media, the pandemic plopped a mirror in front of many teams. Many took that as an opportunity to try something new -- and have seen it bear fruit.

"You hear a lot of people from a lot of different walks of life saying, 'Use this time to get better at something,'" Zillo said. "I think baseball, as a whole, has, when it comes to looking under different rocks, now is really using social media and all of its tentacles to reach as many fans as possible."

The clock is ticking on 2020 MLB season talks. Here's what could make a deal work -- or fall apart

By Jeff Passan

Finally the ugliness is starting to abate. Because strife and discord are foundational elements of the relationship between Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association, the possibility of them reappearing out of nowhere, like autoimmune diseases intent on wrecking a baseball season, remains palpable. And yet in recent days, the parties have come to the place they were always bound to wind up: ready to actually discuss what a 2020 season will look like.

The long-awaited proposal from MLB on an economic plan for this year will be sent to the union early next week, multiple sources briefed on the league's intentions told ESPN. The posturing and preening of the past two weeks will subside and give way to a more productive fight -- the sort that answers the ultimate question: Will there be baseball in 2020?

While there has been progress on the health-and-safety elements of a return, fundamental disagreements on money endure. It's the kind of problem that in normal circumstances would take months to address. Baseball doesn't have months. It has days. And in any accelerated timeline, two overriding elements must exist for a deal to come together: motivation and trust. The first is easy. Both sides recognize that a 2020 deal isn't just a deal for 2020; the short- and long-term futures of the sport ride on it.

Trust, on the other hand, is hard to come by, and if this thing falls apart -- if the absence of a good-faith negotiation dooms the 2020 baseball season -- it won't be directly because of the coronavirus pandemic. It will be because the erosion of trust in recent years among the leaders on both sides poisoned and polluted the landscape to an extent that a deal never was going to happen in the first place. As cynical as that sounds, it's close enough to the truth to make everyone involved uncomfortable and motivate them to spend the rest of May ensuring the roosting chickens don't cluck their way to a summer and fall of emptiness.

Transparency and simplicity are the keys. Even if there is disagreement on the true nature of teams' finances -- there always has been and always will be -- that hasn't in the past quarter-century proved an unbridgeable gap. The more information the league offers, the more comfortable the union will be in acknowledging the struggles teams face. Though a deal that covers the next two years before the current collective bargaining agreement lapses would be ideal, it is also unrealistic. "The calendar," one high-ranking official said, "isn't our friend." Focusing on the present, on 2020, on getting players playing and games going, is the only reasonable obligation of the coming conversations.

The ticks of the clock are blaring. The $170 million advance to players runs out Sunday. The time for pretense is over. The baseball season depends on it. Now is the moment -- the only moment -- to answer the most difficult questions. Is there going to be baseball this year?

You really had to start with the hardest one.

No one said this was going to be easy.

Fine. How about this: The decision-makers who answer that question are professionally skeptical because they can't afford to trade in optimism, but they see a pathway to a deal. There will be late nights, countless Zoom calls, horse-trading and compromise. The entire operation is fragile. And the coming days are paramount.

"Everything," one high-ranking official involved in the discussions said, "is going to happen next week."

MLB's labor policy committee, which sets the league's strategy in these matters, planned to meet Friday. Its decision on an approach -- does it abandon any notion of a revenue split, which the union has deemed a non-starter, or continue to forge toward that dead end? -- will offer the greatest insight into the viability of any deal.

The committee is cognizant that continuing to suggest a revenue split will be met with a polar-opposite response from the union and only entrench the gridlock. The lack of progress this coming week would all but kill the league's desire to start spring training 2.0 in mid-June and begin the season in early July. The end of May, or perhaps the first day or two of June, is the target.

So why not just set a deadline for a deal then?

It's not the worst idea. A deadline places pressure on the sides. But it's pressure they already feel. If there's a June 1 deadline and they don't reach it, negotiations are more liable to implode. If they're close to a deal June 1 and complete it June 3, the lack of a deadline will have behooved all. No need to add another potentially destabilizing element to already-precarious negotiations.

Let's back up. Can you please explain what all this is even about?

Billionaires and millionaires fighting over billions.

Sounds like fun.

Oh, it's a gas. Here's the Cliffs Notes: MLB, which typically brings in more than $10 billion a year in revenue, is preparing for a fraction of that. Teams, whose cash flow typically comes from gate revenues, won't reap any of that without fans in the stands. They want the players, who in a March deal with the league agreed to a significant pay cut -- they'll be paid a prorated portion of their salary depending on the number of games played -- to take an even bigger haircut. The players believe those terms are ironclad. The league believes a clause in the March agreement calls for further conversation about salary in the event of games played in empty stadiums.

ESPN Daily Podcast

As much as both sides recognize the miserable optics of arguing about huge sums of money in the midst of an unemployment crisis, it hasn't stopped the bickering.

What is the union's culpability in that?

The players haven't done themselves any favors, but they're also in the unenviable position in which defending themselves looks greedy and playing coy runs the risk of projecting weakness (even if, in reality, it would illustrate a great amount of discipline and canny).

Newsflash: The players are not greedy for holding to the position that the 50% pay cut they're already due to take is enough. They are every bit as entitled as ownership to protect their money. Why businesses get the benefit of the doubt but labor doesn't is a mystery that defies all forms of logic, but then here we are, with Chris Russo, who gets paid by MLB, uncorking a hysterical-in-every-sense-of-the-word screed about how the MLBPA can "go to hell."

Since hell has a two-week quarantine in effect for arrivals, the union will likely decline taking such a trip. Here's where it should go: to whatever place necessary that ensures players are well-informed not of a segment of the media's ignorance but about the nature and substance of its strategy -- about how, if it is willing to bargain with the league, that give-and-take is elemental and does not show frailty.

The March agreement, for example, has left some players confused. Union leadership has unfailingly told its constituency that it is entitled to full pro rata. This is their interpretation. They are not wavering. The agreement itself was not widely distributed, and three players represented by different agencies said their agents, who are lawyers, wanted to parse the language but couldn't. This drew particular attention after the New York Post's Joel Sherman this week wrote about a conversation between league and union officials regarding the economic-feasibility clause in the deal that MLB believes gives it the right to ask for further financial concessions.

The sentiment that MLB is using the pandemic to execute a money grab is at the heart of the union's attempts to rally its members. It's a great sales pitch. It has worked. Now comes time for the pivot. However inherent the mistrust, however dubious the players are of the owners, treating them as deeply and irretrievably avaricious is the sort of thing that dooms a season. And what of the owners?

They are in asset-hoarding mode. The last thing they want is for financial issues in 2020 to imperil their ownership. That said, one person with knowledge of teams' finances said: "This is not a solvency issue, it's a liquidity issue."

Meaning that teams should have less trouble with long-term financial commitments (solvency) than short-term (liquidity). Some teams are saying their liquidity crunch is dire, which prompted the MLBPA to deliver a massive request for financial information from the league. This is another area in which transparency and simplicity could move mountains. If the league offers a greater window into its business that doesn't necessarily cover the entire scope of what the union seeks, it's the sort of gesture that reasonable people will appreciate.

In an update to players that was obtained by ESPN, the MLBPA referenced a letter sent by the league to the union earlier this week. The sentiment of it was conciliatory. Both parties will suffer financially. For the good of baseball, now and going forward, it is time to get the framework in place to make a deal.

I get the now part. What does going forward look like?

Trying to focus on the present, buddy.

Humor me.

Fine. You asked for it. The 2021 season has a chance to make this tiff look like a slap fight. If there are no fans in the stands next year and players are guaranteed full salaries, it would provide an even greater stress test on owners' finances. The presumable move would be to seek salary reductions by players for a full share of games. You can imagine how that will go over.

Hey, remember that whole thing earlier about simplicity. Let's figure out 2020 before we use potentially unfounded assumptions about spectators to speculate about 2021.

Fine, fine. Back to now. The MLBPA responded to the league's health-and-safety protocol draft Thursday. What did the union say?

The response, sources said, was cordial and included more questions and desires for clarification than it asked for some sort of a massive policy overhaul. The 67-page protocol was impressively thorough, to the point where a number of players worried that it might be overkill in some places. It needs work, no question, but after tweaks that listen to union and front-office feedback, it could very well serve as a template for all team-sports leagues' return.

For all the disagreement between the league and union, one place they've engendered good will in recent years is health and safety. Between the agreed-upon performance-enhancing drug and domestic violence policies, the parties have managed to find common ground. There is shared interest in ensuring the coronavirus does not spread in clubhouses.

Can MLB test players, managers, coaches and other essential personnel every day, as some players desire?

Maybe. Deputy commissioner Dan Halem told ESPN earlier this week that the league was prepared to process as many as 14,500 coronavirus tests per week. That would constitute anywhere from three to four tests per person a week. The desire to be tested more often by some players isn't born of fear as much as it is in hopes that more tests would lead to a loosening of some restrictions in the protocol.

Does MLB safety proposal go too far?

Jeff Passan breaks down MLB's new safety proposal, as well as a timetable for what needs to be done for the season to potentially start in early July.

The problem with that is the sorts of tests being done. If MLB could install labs in every stadium to process hundreds of point-of-care tests each day, perhaps it would make sense. Point-of-care testing returns a near-immediate result, and if everyone who came into contact with players tested negative, they could reasonably spit and high-five to their heart's content.

Problem is, there is one lab processing MLB's tests, and it is in Utah. It will return results within 24 hours. So if there is an asymptomatic carrier inside the clubhouse and players do not follow the protocol, it theoretically increases the chance of an outbreak.

More testing is better than less, sure, so if that's what the players want, MLB will have to consider it. But unless the tests are rapid, it does little to change the rules by which they'll abide.

Like the one that discourages them from showering?

You have only 20 questions, and you seriously wasted one on this?

Do you not think hygiene is important, Passan?

Let's put it this way: If there's a hill MLB is willing to die on, postgame showers ain't it. The players will get their showers. And their hot and cold tubs, too. Can the teams pull this off?

As restrictive as the protocol is for players, it's almost equally burdensome on teams. Multiple front-office officials said they've started planning to expand their facilities to accommodate the social distancing that will make a regular clubhouse uninhabitable for a full team. They've also tried to line up extra medical personnel to handle the volume of intake testing before spring training and the additional work during a season. The lead time doesn't make it any easier, but as one GM said this week: "If there's going to be a season, I don't care how hard it is. We have to make it work."

What are the other holdups at this point?

Consider the case of a young star, who asked to remain anonymous. He believes he eventually will sign a nine-figure deal. This year, after the 50% pay cut, after taxes, after clubhouse dues, he will make somewhere in the $200,000 range.

'Opening Day' Power Rankings

"That's a lot of money," he said. "I understand that. But it's not $100 million. So why wouldn't I just sit out this year and not risk getting hurt? [Teams] are going to do everything they can not to pay us. I don't want to give them an excuse."

Fundamentally, he's not wrong, and he has expressed as much privately. He also knows that if he were to do that, his teammates would see him as someone who wasn't committed to the team's success, and there is no worse label inside a clubhouse than "selfish."

So anyone who doesn't want to play doesn't have to play, right?

Unclear. This much is clear: In the health-and-safety protocol draft, the language exempted "high-risk individuals" from having to participate in any 2020 season. It did not mention voluntary withdrawal from the year.

Executives are fearful that players, knowing they will receive service time regardless of what happens this season, would opt out because of money rather than any sort of concern about the coronavirus or moral objection to the league's plan. Players desire the flexibility to do so. The issue of pay for non-high-risk individuals who don't play isn't likely to scuttle any agreement, but it could be among the most-discussed issues over the next week and a half.

Hey, got a joke for you.

Shoot.

The .

What the Angels did this week to their baseball operations department, gutting it from top to bottom, was an exercise in how not to act during what's a treacherous time for everyone in the world.

As the Minnesota Twins and St. Louis Cardinals guaranteed full pay for full-time employees through June ... as the promised no furloughs to their baseball-operations employees and full pay to lower-level employees for the remainder of the season ... as clubs followed the examples set by other organizations that have pledged to treat their employees with the respect and empathy owed people whose diligence and hard work built the foundations for successful organizations ... the Angels furloughed almost all of their scouts and player-development personnel.

All of it was galling. Particularly gross was how it intersects with the June 10 amateur draft. Angels scouts have been poring over video and filing amateur reports all spring. Most of them will be gone June 1. The Angels told cross-checkers that they'll stay on through the draft -- and then get furloughed less than a week later.

Seriously?

Seriously.

Here's all you need to know: Angels owner Arte Moreno, who is the ultimate decision-maker in the organization, has a reported net worth of $3.3 billion.

Are others going to follow his lead?

About half the teams in baseball have made known their intentions through at least June. Some, like the , Colorado Rockies and Chicago White Sox, have vowed to treat their employees well, which presumably means forgoing layoffs or furloughs. Others, like the , and , have told full-time workers they will remain employed through the end of the season. The New York Yankees this week told those in the ticketing department that they would maintain their full salary and benefits through at least June 15, according to a source.

I know I said earlier that I was done talking about 2021, but this subject warrants a flip-flop. There is an increasing sense of dread around baseball front offices that they are going to look nothing in 2021 like they did coming into 2020. Or 2010 for that matter. Arenado: 'I miss baseball every day'

Baseball operations departments have swollen in size over the past decade. And with fear about revenues not just in 2020 or 2021 but what a bear economy may do to the years beyond, it is those spheres with outsized head counts that find themselves most vulnerable.

The expected contraction of the minor leagues will cost hundreds of jobs on the baseball side and thousands more in stadium operations. Player- development departments, a source said, will shrink. At perhaps the greatest risk, sources said, are scouts, particularly professional scouts, whose eyes have for generations been the vital sense in finding baseball players.

Baseball without scouts. How?

First off, scouts aren't disappearing. Teams currently going through their 2021 budgets have identified areas for cuts, and one happens to be professional scouting. It is a costly endeavor, sending someone across the country (and, in many cases, the world) for hundreds of days a year, and the emergence of analytics has, at the major league level at least, prompted front offices to rely less on scouts.

At the same time, as teams contemplate clearing out their scouting department, perhaps they'll remember the lesson taught in the wake of Moneyball: scouting complements statistics and vice versa. And when both work in concert with player development, it's the sort of symbiosis that churns out better baseball players, which, after all, is the goal.

Getting rid of scouts, though a reality, is shortsighted, not just because the art of it can balance the science of analytics but because when the numbers are so ubiquitous, a great insight gleaned from an in-person look -- do the kid's teammates like him or what is his work ethic or any soft- skill knowledge -- can weigh heavily on the assessment.

Most hyped prospect ever for every team

A smart team will recognize that, load up on scouts and try to reap the advantages. That's how baseball works. Everyone zigs, the creative teams zag. Not even the coronavirus will change that. It may even exacerbate it, turning cookie-cutter baseball into something with fewer resources and more incentive to innovate.

The longer-term implications of this winnowing are what's most troubling. Tasking fewer people to do the same amount of work as before is a recipe for burnout and disillusionment. What happens when those people, many of whom remain in the game because of its romantic allure or its fulfillment of a competitive fire, simply tire of it? There will always be people who want to work in baseball, but to attract and retain the best and brightest, it cannot deviate too far from the standard it has set in recent years. Otherwise, those best and brightest, the ones with skills transferable to other industries, will see those opportunities, and the brain drain in the game could be far worse than this first wave of job cuts.

Where else are teams going to look to save money?

I opened up Pandora's box when I said 2021 again, huh?

Yup.

The easiest answer is free agency. This goes back to the earlier point about '21. Right now, somewhere in the neighborhood of $2.6 billion worth of contracts are guaranteed for 2021. This year, arbitration deals were worth another $700 million-plus, so even if teams are extraordinarily selective with whom they tender contracts, the arbitration market will be, at worst, worth more than $400 million. Which brings us to the tidy number of $3 billion in salaries.

The free-agent squeeze this winter has a chance to be brutal for players. "Teams aren't even going to have to collude to collude," one agent said this week, acknowledging that financial issues have been laid bare inside of ownership and front-office circles. Executives know who's got money and who's poor. They see who's cutting staff and who isn't. It's far easier to assess a market when it's clear who won't be participating.

Let's use the future to get back to the present. You talked about minor league teams being cut next year. What's happening with minor league players this year?

It's unclear. MLB in late March announced that it would pay all minor league players $400 a week through May 31. That is a week from Sunday. The silence has left thousands of minor league players who already are embarrassingly underpaid wondering if they'll see another paycheck this year.

This point was shown in devastating fashion with your humble narrator as the unfortunate victim. In attempting to make a point about the Twins committing full salaries to their employees, I drew the ire of Mitch Horacek, a 28-year-old left-hander who reached Triple-A last season, who made a point of his own.

Yeah. That about covers it. Minor leaguers are nervous, and they should be. For the past two months, they have worked to stay in shape and prepare for a season that may never happen. Even if MLB carries a 30-man major league roster with a 20-man taxi squad, that leaves the remaining minor leaguers without games to play. Do teams expect them to continue working out? Training? Preparing for 2021? Of course.

Well, then pay them. At around 6,000 players and $400 a week, that's just shy of $29 million for the next three months to cover every minor leaguer. Less than $1 million per team. You sure love to spend owners' money, don't you?

There are certainly worse pastimes than pretending to be a billionaire. And if I'm the faux billionaire who pays his employees and minor league players and big league players because, you know, I have billions of dollars and the people who put everything into making my business successful don't, well, that sounds like a pretty good billionaire.

More to the point: As potential expenses pile up, it's worth trying to understand the sort of money MLB has made. In its financial disclosure to the union a week and a half ago, the league said that since 2010, it had not had a collective EBITDA -- earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization or, pretty much, how much money you make -- of more than $250 million in a single year since 2010.

MLB's great debates

The closest facsimile to an independent audit of MLB's finances comes in the form of the annual Forbes valuations. Now, these numbers are far from the be-all, end-all. They are not sacrosanct. They are the best we've got to check against MLB.

Forbes pegged the industry's earnings in 2019 at $10.5 billion. The league's figures were closer to $10 billion. Forbes said ticket revenue and other game-related expenses account for about $4.1 billion of that -- around 39.3%. MLB says it's at 40%. Pretty spot on.

To see Forbes' EBITDA numbers -- or operating income, as it says -- are staggering. Last year, Forbes said, 29 of 30 teams made a profit. (The Miami Marlins, for the fourth straight year, were in the red.) The aforementioned Angels: $61 million, after years of $19 million, $25 million, $68 million and $42 million. As an industry, Forbes said, MLB teams' combined operating income exceeded $1.5 billion last season. In 2018, it was $1.19 billion. The year before that, $858 million. And $988 million. And $662 million. The past five years together: More than $5 billion in profit, according to Forbes.

Now, the league has long disputed these numbers, and maybe they are high. But 400% high? At MLB's no-EBITDA-over-$250 million claim that would mean the maximum number for the past five years was $1.25 billion. The gap there is simply too large to believe that Forbes is overshooting when it's so spot on with so much of its other math, including its team valuations that have, if anything, undervalued franchises.

So what's your point?

Major League Baseball owners are really rich, and if they are cash poor and need to borrow money to pay employees and minor leaguers and major leaguers this season, they can and should. Wealth is often built on debt. This debt is an investment in the future of their asset.

Major league players need to recognize that walking into a room -- pardon: a Zoom -- without a desire to find a comfortable-enough place for all parties involved won't be helpful. The posturing is over. Deals take flexibility. Embrace it.

All of this, remember, is for fans, who should understand that the nonsense of the past two weeks will be a footnote in history if MLB and the players accomplish in the next 10 days what they should.

The health-and-safety protocol will be there.

The appetite for the game is ravenous.

The time for a deal, for baseball to return, is finally here.

Wall Street Journal

Why the Sports Comeback Has Begun

There is now real momentum behind the return of American sports. The leagues have decided that games must go on—and that means learning to live with risk.

By Ben Cohen and Louise Radnofsky

One positive test of one athlete in one league was all it took for American sports to stop.

On the night of March 11, which turned out to be the inadvertent tipping point in the nation’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, Utah Jazz star Rudy Gobert testing positive immediately triggered the suspension of the NBA season. Soon the NCAA tournament was canceled, the Major League Baseball season was postponed and an extended sports drought was underway.

It might be over soon. More than two months into the shutdown, the biggest, richest, most popular American sports leagues have decided their games must go on. While they are proceeding with caution, there has been more progress in the last 10 days than in the previous 10 weeks. There is now real momentum behind the comeback of American sports.

The NBA is looking to restart in late July and relocate the whole league inside a Walt Disney Co. complex in Orlando. MLB owners and the players’ union are hammering out a deal that could start the baseball season even sooner. NHL players recently approved plans for an expanded playoff. Even the governors of New York, California and Texas are lending their support.

What their plans have in common is an acceptance that some players may be infected—and a belief that leagues should focus on limiting potential outbreaks.

That represents a massive shift from only a few weeks ago, when sport leaders were exploring reopening with more stringent measures that proved impossible to implement, and it coincides with a broader reassessment of risk as the nation attempts to restart a crippled economy.

“A month ago, complete lockdown was absolutely appropriate,” said Bob Wachter, chair of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. “Part of it was because the disease was so rapidly moving and there was so much we didn’t immediately understand, and part of it was that we needed some time to get moving on some things that absolutely needed to be in place.” Now, though, “I think we’re beginning to learn that with aggressive testing and contact tracing, there are ways of containing the virus.”

The story of how the leagues got to thinking of playing sports again in restricted environments is also the story of how leagues moved the goal posts on safety and how much has changed psychologically and economically since one positive test was enough to wipe out billions of dollars.

In the brave new world of sports, a single positive test might not even stop a game. The leagues are proceeding under the assumption that players and coaches testing positive is inevitable. The future of sports is contingent on baking that risk into their plans.

“I think it may be too stringent to say that one player testing positive means everything has to shut down,” Wachter said.

There is no guarantee these seasons will finish even if they restart. There are still months of hurdles to clear and hard questions to answer. There is also the distinct possibility of disaster if players or coaches get seriously ill.

But the best-case scenario is the sports famine ending with a feast: a summer with NBA and NHL playoff games and MLB action followed by a bounty of NFL, college football, tennis and golf majors in the fall.

The glimmers of hope from sports officials are reflections of broader changes across the U.S. as states reopen, cases decline, testing increases and scientists learn more about this microscopic pathogen that turned the world upside down.

They also have the luxury of peering across the nearest ocean and studying how leagues in Asia and Europe have restarted play—and kept playing through some positive tests.

The comeback won’t happen overnight. American sports will be sidelined for several more weeks at the very least. The NBA is targeting a late July return at Disney’s sprawling facilities in Orlando, Fla., for example, with a long timeline for quarantine, training camps and moving to a neutral site before playing games that matter.

And there are significant differences in each league’s protocols. Baseball is staking its hopes on frequent spit tests and drastic measures of social distancing at the ballpark but won’t require players to undertake a strict quarantine. Nascar is betting on masks and threatening fines of up to $50,000 for employees who refuse to comply, but mostly leaning on temperature checks as a screening for infection. Basketball is planning to sequester everyone in one place—what was called a “bubble” has since been rebranded as a “campus environment”—but can’t do much about the inherent dangers of a game designed to be played indoors.

Not everything is coming into focus, either. The outlook for college football remains unclear because it is closely tied to bringing all students back to campus this fall. Just in the past week, Notre Dame said it was moving to welcome students back early on Aug. 10, but University of Michigan president Mark Schlissel told The Wall Street Journal that it remains uncertain whether his students will return in September—or any time during the coming academic year.

Even as sports inch toward resuming, they almost certainly won’t be played in front of fans. While some colleges have floated ambitious plans to socially distance their football stadiums, the professional leagues are operating as if they will be in empty arenas for a while, perhaps until there is a vaccine or effective treatments.

But the first phase in this return to sports comes with a stamp of approval from Washington, where everyone from President Trump to Anthony Fauci has voiced some level of support, and it now has the backing of influential U.S. governors in the states that have been slammed by the virus.

White House officials have identified sports as essential to what they call “the great American comeback” since the earliest days of the crisis. A senior health official in the Trump administration said that the leagues had discussed their risk-reduction strategies and they appeared to be sufficient. While local authorities were available to coordinate with the leagues, the administration has taken a position of “flexibility” when it comes to sports, the official said.

The “virus will be a part of our lives,” the official said, and the emphasis now is figuring out how to function safely. The delicate balance of risk and reward has been on the minds of power brokers in sports from the very beginning of the shutdown. For months, the risks were winning. Now the rewards are.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban predicted in March—less than two weeks after the NBA season was suspended—that fans would be starved for sports whenever they’re cleared to return.

“Once we start to turn the corner and can start playing games, everyone who has ever had an interest in sports will be craving to watch games, to root for their team, to cheer with friends, to have something that takes our minds away from everything that has happened,” he wrote in an email. Cuban, whose team’s practice facility remains closed, still feels that way. “We need that release,” he says.

USA Today

Tampa Bay Rays welcome more than a dozen players, manager to first workout at home field

Gabe Lacques

As Major League Baseball begins its most crucial week yet in hopes of salvaging a 2020 season, a quiet but not insignificant gathering took place in Florida.

Some 14 Tampa Bay Rays entered Tropicana Field in pairs, stayed away from the batting cage and weight room, but nonetheless got in a workout Monday afternoon under the watchful eye of their manager — perhaps the most formal gathering of big leaguers in their home ballpark since the COVID-19 pandemic cast the season in doubt.

The group included All-Star outfielder , shortstop Willy Adames and new outfielder Manuel Margot, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

The players had their temperatures checked upon entry and wore masks into the stadium, but could remove them during their workout. The team improvised a number of free weights and plyometric stations for the players, who are among a group that remained in the Tampa area after their spring training site in Port Charlotte, Florida was closed more than two months ago.

“It felt good, but it was still odd,” Rays manager said on a Zoom call with Tampa media, per The Athletic. “I didn’t go up and handshake anybody or give anybody a hug. When you haven’t seen someone in that long, you’re probably doing that, so that was odd.

"But we certainly respect the situation and what’s at stake. We’re going to do what we’re asked. It was a step in the right direction and it was good to see smiling faces.”

Tuesday, MLB is expected to extend an economic proposal to players in hopes of beginning the season in early July. The sides have already reviewed a 67-page document regarding health protocols, with players expected to respond to that soon.

With a second spring training expected to commence by mid-June, some teams have opened spring facilities and home ballparks, subject to social- distancing guidelines in their areas. While an agreement on player pay and health may not be hammered out immediately, players and teams must ramp up in earnest with the anticipation that they’ll need to be ready soon.

“If those dates are actuality,” Cash told reporters, “e probably need to get going a little bit and starting some more aggressive type of routine. I think this was a really good start for a first day and a first week."