According to Keith Law, the Astros are down to one scout, Bob, after firing hundreds of great scouts because they are cheap. The Astros grounded Bob.
With so many HS and college canceling their sports seasons, there may not be a whole lot of scouting opportunities.
Dusty must be thinking this is the strangest Spring Training ever. Click is probably wishing he could have a "normal" Spring considering the circumstances. What a nightmare for all involved...
James Click said the Astros will stay in West Palm Beach "for the foreseeable future." James Click said that, to his knowledge, no Astros player, staff member or other personnel has exhibited symptoms that warrant a test for COVD-19 Astros players are staying in the West Palm Beach area for the time being. Their spring training facility is closed to the public and press but players can still go there to work out on their own. More details on next steps are expected from MLB/PA in the next few days. Astros GM James Click says players have been told to remain close to the team’s facility in WPB for tthe ime being. Facility is closed to public/press, but players are having optional, staggered workouts and can get medical treatment. They are following MLB guidelines. Dusty Baker in a conference call with the media: “None of us have ever been through this before. The uncertainty of the entire situation is what we’ve never been through before. We’ll just stick together and try to do this as a group and do it as a unit.” Dusty Baker: “We don’t have any organized workouts. We’re simply here (in West Palm Beach) to help monitor and do what the players want to do. They’re not required to come in, but if they want to come in we’re here and available for them.”
Not only strange, but unfulfilling in the most dramatic way possible. Dusty came out of semi-retirement to coach a championship team and win a ring, and instead, might not coach a regular season game? Geeez.
I'm guessing yes. Players can't retire while under contract, then return years later and not still be under contract.
Thanks for the unnecessary recap MLB suspended them. Thus, they can't participate in anything MLB for the duration of the suspension. One report stated they aren't even allowed to attend minor league games. If they were fired only, MLB wouldn't stop them from engaging in baseball. The correlation I made between 'retiring' and a 'cancelled season' should be understandable.
You used the words "under contract", not me. I was just pointing out that they are not, in fact, under contract. Correlate that at your own leisure. Per @Kemahkeith's point, I have no idea how MLB would/will handle a non-labor stoppage, with regard to service days or the technical length of the season or anything. We're in pretty uncharted waters here.
Spoiler Money will always be an issue when a $10.7 billion industry shuts down, even while trying to serve the greater good. But when President Trump declared a national emergency on Friday, it changed the dynamic in the question of whether players will be paid with the start of the 2020 season delayed due to COVID-19. A day after he chose to delay the start of the season, commissioner Rob Manfred met with the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, Tony Clark, and other top officials in Arizona. The list of issues the sides must resolve is long, with topics ranging from service time and contract bonuses to practical matters of scheduling. At this point, industry sources believe it is unlikely the season will begin before May, which is dependent, of course, on the containment of the virus. While most issues were unsettled as of Friday night, the sides did agree on one thing: the players are free to leave spring training if they want. They can continue to work out at their team’s spring-training facility (where activities will be significantly reduced), relocate to the city where their team plays or head home. In an illustration of the chaos the sport faces at the moment, some players and agents expressed concern that players leaving spring training could impact another area: player compensation. Those players and agents feared if a player left camp, he would make it easier for his team to withhold pay prior to the beginning of the season. That belief, according to a source involved in the discussions between the league and the union, was ill-informed. But some agents also thought the players needed to stay together to demonstrate their readiness if the delay to the start of the season is relatively minimal. Their rationale: The more prepared the players are, the quicker they will be ready to play, enabling them to miss fewer games and create a greater justification for getting paid, both to the public and MLB. In fact, the reason the league might avoid paying players in full while games are not played is that Trump invoked the Stafford Act, placing the country into a state of emergency on Friday afternoon. Not only did Trump’s choice free up federal funds for the nation to combat COVID-19, but it also might have quieted a potential dispute in baseball. On Thursday, when Manfred announced that the 2020 season would be delayed, the first sentence of his statement included the phrase, “national emergency.” A clause in every major league player’s contract – and also included in the sport’s collective-bargaining agreement – gives the commissioner the right “to suspend the operation of this contract during any national emergency during which Major League Baseball is not played.” If Trump had not acted, the union might have argued that Manfred could not invoke a national emergency on his own. While Trump’s decision appears to give MLB the right to withhold pay, Manfred is not inclined to take such a hard-line position, a source said. One possibility under discussion is the owners advancing players some of their 2020 salaries. Major leaguers are not paid until a season begins, going through spring training on a healthy per diem. Compensation, though, is but one of many subjects under consideration as the sport enters uncharted territory. Baseball revolves around a typical calendar of 162 games in 186 days. While it is technically possible baseball will fulfill its preference of playing 162 games in 2020, a shortened regular season appears more likely, making service time a potential issue. In a season of normal length, a player must be on a major-league roster for 172 days to qualify for a full year of service. If the season is shortened, MLB and the union would need to agree on the number of days that would be required. In a similar vein: many players have incentives and bonuses in their contracts: X number of games played or pitched, for example, earns them Y dollars. Would those bonus thresholds be prorated as well? Even for suspended players, questions of fairness warrant consideration. Diamondbacks infielder Dominic Leyba is set to begin an 80-game suspension at the start of the season for violating baseball’s joint drug policy. Would he receive credit for games that were unplayed, or would his penalty begin only after play resumed? Beyond the talks between the MLB and the union, club officials spent Friday pondering the question businesses are confronting worldwide during the coronavirus pandemic: how to keep their employees healthy. Some executives and player agents believed the players stood the best chance of avoiding infection by staying together at their team’s spring-training complex. Others thought the players would reduce the risk of an entire team becoming infected by dispersing. As a team, the Yankees voted unanimously to remain in Tampa, with their player rep, reliever Zack Britton, telling reporters, “We have a shot at a World Series title. We want to be prepared to seize that opportunity. Guys aren’t panicking about this thing; we understand that it’s serious, but the Yankees have a ton of resources in the area. We feel like this is a good place for us to be.” Agent Scott Boras, whose Yankees clients include Britton, right-hander Gerrit Cole and lefty James Paxton, said his general belief was that players are better off staying put. “The spring-training facilities are an isolated cocoon, they’re perfect,” Boras said. “Everybody is following the same routine. You have health care. You have the greatest amount of treatment and care for those players you could possibly provide, and the earliest detection. The spring-training sites are ideal for the health and well-being of the players, absolutely, because of those two factors.” Not everyone in the sport, however, thinks that continued use of a shared facility is smart. Some suggested that one of the strategies doctors and officials have recommended to combat COVID-19, social distancing, may be more difficult to accomplish in even a limited spring-training setting. As one executive pointed out, if you keep the players together, it reduces the risk of one getting the virus. But then, if someone gets it, the probability increases of the whole team experiencing a mass outbreak. “We are reacting to the protocols set down by baseball, giving players the choice to stay or go,” Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said. “Obviously, we’ll vary work schedules to limit the groups, stuff like that. Whether players are here or off at home in their off-time, whether they go to a Starbuck’s, a mall or gas station, they’re still getting exposure no matter where they go. You’re just applying the best practices possible.” No road map exists for any of the issues MLB and other professional sports leagues are facing. No one can predict when play will resume, making it all but impossible to plot the future. As one agent put it: “It’s hard to have a plan when you can’t have a plan.”
