Outside The Confines: Everything is going wrong

Happy Wednesday, Cubs fans, hope the downward slide into the weekend treats you well.

Of course the biggest news of the past week has been the news of a Miami Marlins COVID outbreak that has impacted more than 14 players and staff and rendered the entire team out of commission for the remainder of the week.

We’re learning — among other things — that vital decisions about play are being left to player group chats; and that MLB isn’t taking this nearly as seriously as they should be.

Since the main focus of all baseball stories this week revolve around this story, I’m just going to jump into the links to share the great pieces surfacing around the internet

Let’s start by a look at the beginning of the outbreak news earlier this week.

• Jay Jaffe doesn’t mince words as he explains that the outbreak is a crisis point for the MLB season.
• Harry Bushnell takes the problem-solving approach by asking how MLB should respond to the outbreak.
• After news of the outbreak, the Washington Nationals players decided as a group they were not comfortable playing in Miami this coming weekend, Stephanie Apstein reports.
• Ken Rosenthal and Jayson Stark share that this outbreak must be more than just a wakeup call for MLB. (The Athletic subscription required.)
• MLB has now put the Marlins on a temporary timeout, ESPN looks at what that means.
• ESPN offers a very cool infographic guide to a day in the life of MLB’s COVID protocols.
• Mister Lizzie at our Rays sister site DRaysBay pleads with Kevin Kiermaier to stop hugging his teammates.
• mhatter106 at our Astros sister site Crawfish Boxes has created a new statistic for an uncertain season.
• In charity news, Mariners minor league pitcher Jack Anderson is raising money for Chicago-based group Young, Black, and Lit which helps provide books to children in low-income homes.
• Corey Brock and Dennis Lin have the final results of fans favorite radio broadcasters. (The Athletic subscription required.)
• In the wake of all the recent activism on baseball fields, Shakeia Taylor offers her frustrations over performative activism in MLB. (Baseball Prospectus subscription required.)
• The Twins took a moment mid-game Tuesday.

• Ben Clemens looks at how crazy it is that no teams are undefeated this early in the season.
• One shoo-in for the Hall of Fame — Mike Trout — is now actually fully qualified for the Hall, explains Jay Jaffe.
• I had not wondered about what happened to home run balls in empty stadiums, but I’m still glad Emma Baccellieri wrote about it.
• Sam Miller looks at the World Series chances of all 30 MLB teams.
• Joc Pederson threw some incredible shade about the Astros without mentioning them by name.

• Oh yeah, and then this inevitable absurdity happened in the Astros-Dodgers game.

And tomorrow will be a better day than today, Buster. Make it so.