The outbreak of the Cardinals COVID-19 – which resulted in some team members needing trips to the emergency room – grew over the weekend, and the team will be sidelined for their fourth consecutive series to begin this week. This will leave the Cardinals from July 30 to August 12 after playing zero games. It also leaves 46 days remaining in the season in which the Cardinals have to play 55 times more to get to 60.
Furthermore, reports indicate the Cardinals are still getting positive tests, which jeopardizes Thursday’s makeup doubleheader with the Tigers and next weekend’s series with the White Sox. After almost two weeks, there is still no end in sight.
Nobody needs me to tell them this is a bad situation. With all the double buyers that would be required, they can not be expected to take care of the pitchers’ arms and the position player’s health in general – without even mentioning how often they spend eight hours a day at the ballpark would be about four, which is already an increased risk for the virus to spread.
The first thing MLB will tell us is that the Cardinals just need to play less than 60 games. Maybe they can play 50 times in 46 days and that brings them to 55. My idea is that something will happen if they somehow come back in time for Thursday’s double header. What if, however, they remain positive tests and need to remain closed? The league can not move forward while simply continuing to postpone the games of one team.
So what should MLB do with the Cardinals? There are three realistic options.
1. Turn off the cardinals
I really do not want to do this. Sure, no one does that. Not only are the Cardinals a franchise and market in marquee in baseball, but the league that operates in this short calendar with 29 teams is not working. There will always be one team missing a series, like the Cubs this weekend and the Pirates this week.
If the Cardinals were completely shut down, the teams that remain on their schedule would play a good number of fewer games than 60 this season. For example, they are scheduled to play the Cubs, Reds and Brewers 10 times each and have not played yet. That would mean that each of those teams would only play 50 and give them an advantage in the playoff standings, because we know, the smaller the sample, the easier it is to switch in wins (which is why it would be completely unfair to play the cardinals like 40 games and compare winning percentages with teams in the East and West for possible wildcard spots).
This is just a non-starter for me and is probably for Rob Manfred as well.
However, this would be a better option, financially speaking for baseball, then the following …
2. Turn off the season
I really do not want this. I’ve had too much fun playing baseball this season to consider how depressed I would be if it went on.
However, the league cannot operate one team for up to three weeks. If we build everything for one team and in the meantime another team from the East or West division has an outbreak, then I think the league could finally admit that this was a mistake and shut everything down – because at one time or another multiple teams playing around 40 games while others playing 60 is a joke of a season for many fans.
However, let me offer another idea.
3. Use the taxi squad
That is, skip the heule Taxi Squad out en route before the situation of MLB Cardinals is improved. The taxi teams are essentially sitting in a bubble and the Cardinals have enough position players and pitchers to field an entire team. There are also free agents they can sign up for underage leagues like the Marlins did to fill out their roster when they returned from an outbreak.
From a competing point of view, I can not imagine that the Cardinals would be excited about this, but there are 29 other teams to consider here. It is an unfortunate situation, which means they have to accept the unfortunate solution. Hey, maybe they even find a few nobles who haven’t gotten a shot at the majors yet.
I’m sure the Cardinals owners group will not like this because of the salary increases, but they can bear it. They have a lot of money. I should note that it does not seem likely that Manfred – he is generally on the side “of the owners of things” – if other owners would support this, know that this could happen to their teams.
However, I do nothing.
This is my choice. MLB should send the Cardinals taxi team to Pittsburgh immediately to schedule the Pirates series. It’s a crazy season anyway, this will just add more craziness. We just can not have one team excluded as long as the Cardinals will be.
