It was exactly one year ago today that Major League Baseball shut down. The now-famous positive COVID test of Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz shut down the NBA the night before. Other sports quickly followed suit and MLB debated the next step through the morning until finally deciding to shut down Spring Training that afternoon.
- MLB allowed the Spring Training games in Florida that had already started to be played to completion. Emma Baccellieri remembers the surreal experience of the Rays/Phillies Spring Training game that was the final American sporting event played before the shutdown.
- Kevin Goldstein was scouting for the Astros in the Dominican Republic when the pandemic shut down baseball. He remembers what happened that week and how he managed to get home.
- Bob Nightengale talks to current baseball scouts about their 2021 season and about how they are finally allowed back in the ballparks.
- Alden Gonzalez spoke to MLB players who opted out of the last 2020 season and discovers that they enter this year with a new sense of purpose and determination. (ESPN+ sub. req.)
- Here’s a quick guide to how every team in MLB is handling attendance to start the season at the moment.
- Levi Weaver looks at the Rangers decision to host full-capacity attendance for two exhibition games and Opening Day. (The Athletic sub. req.) The Rangers said they expect “voluntary compliance” with mask wearing. I’m not sure when 40k people have ever “voluntarily complied” with anything.
- Apropos of nothing, Reds first baseman Joey Votto tested positive for COVID-19. He’s on the injured list.
- Andrew Baggarly looks at this year’s Spring Training and the oddity of players being cut with nowhere to go. (The Athletic sub. req.) So despite being cut, players continue to show up for Spring Training because there’s no minor league camp to which to report.
- News broke yesterday about the new rules changes that will be experimented with in the minor leagues for the 2021 season. ESPN.com’s writers discuss the different rules and which ones they like and which ones they don’t.
- MLB has reportedly “deadened” the ball for the 2021 season. Here’s what some MLB pitchers think of the new ball.
- I used to live near the Lancaster JetHawks stadium and I went to many games there. MLB’s problem with the place was that it was at 2,400 feet elevation and there’s a strong prevailing wind that blows off the ocean to the desert, west to east, every evening. Everyone hit a lot there. One day I went to see a game and there was a catcher that I’d never heard of before. This guy really stood out. Sure, he was hitting something like .360, but everyone on the JetHawks hit. But this guy absolutely commanded the field from behind the plate. He was quick to field his position and made strong throws to the bases. But more importantly, he absolutely commanded the field. He was constantly yelling at his teammates about where they were supposed to stand on defense and what the situation was, where the throws should be going and who was supposed to back up. Usually that’s a coach’s job in A-ball, but here was a low-minors catcher doing all that. I thought to myself “If this guy hits at all, he’s a major leaguer.” I looked up his name in the program.
It was Miguel Montero. Little did I suspect that a little more than a decade later, he’d be one of the stars that would end the Cubs’ World Series title drought. Anyway, I mention this now because the JetHawks were one of the teams that were contracted by MLB and the promise of a partner league never materialized. So now the JetHawks have officially disbanded, the area is without baseball and the city is looking to re-develop the land into something else, maybe an amphitheater.
- Baseball Prospectus is looking at all the teams that have been contracted by MLB and this entry is on the history of baseball in Trenton, NJ and the Trenton Thunder. At least Trenton will continue to have a wooden-bat draft league.
- Zach Kram asks: Could the NL Central be the worst division ever? (Answer for the lazy: possible but not likely.)
- Michael Baumann believes that we are near the end of the Astros’ “dynasty.”
- Adding to the Astros’ woes, top pitching prospect Forrest Whitley will undergo Tommy John surgery. He’ll miss all of 2021 after missing all of 2020 like every other minor leaguer.
- Twins center fielder Byron Buxton has missed the last few games of Spring Training after breaking a tooth on a steak. He’s undergone a root canal and had a crown installed.
- Mets pitcher Jacob deGrom was hitting 102 mph with his fastball in yesterday’s Spring Training game. Yikes.
- Dan Szymborski estimates what a long-term extension for Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor should cost the team.
- Also, the Mets have been practicing their winning-the-World-Series celebrations in Spring Training. Nothing like taunting the baseball karma gods.
- Jake Mailhot wants to know what happened to Diamondbacks infielder Ketel Marte’s power in 2020 and will it return in 2021?
- OK, now for the ugly news in baseball. Outfielder Yasiel Puig is still a free agent after having been an unsigned free agent for all of 2020. Now we’re finding out that one reason that no team has signed him is that there has been a sexual assault allegation from 2018 made against him that MLB is investigating. The woman, who remains anonymous, is pursuing a lawsuit against Puig.
- The body camera video was released on former outfielder Johnny Damon’s DUI arrest. Damon and his wife were also charged with resisting arrest. It’s not pretty. Damon seemed to believe the officer should let him go because he had a “Blue Lives Matter” license plate holder.
- Shalise Manza Young notes that Damon’s encounter with the police would probably have been much different if he were black.
- Gambler Benjamin Tucker Patz pled guilty to sending threatening messages to members of the Tampa Bay Rays.
- Remember former Dodgers owner Frank McCourt? The one who MLB forced out of the game after driving the team into bankruptcy in order to finance the lavish lifestyle of him and his soon-to-be ex-wife? Of course, McCourt came out of owning the Dodgers just fine after the selling the team for $2.15 billion. He took the money that he made from the sale of the Dodgers and bought Olympique de Marseille, a legendary French soccer team. As Molly Knight notes, McCourt’s ownership of OM is going just about as well as his ownership of the Dodgers went. (The Athletic sub. req.) Except Dodgers fans never stormed Camelback Ranch and set fire to it in protest.
- OK, here’s less negative news. The Angels have hired Matt Vasgersian to be their new play-by-play announcer. Vasgersian will continue to work for MLB Network and ESPN Sunday Night Baseball and will call Angels games remotely for now.
- Here’s good news as both DirecTV and Comcast will reduce the price of MLB Extra Innings to $129.96 for the 2021 season, a price cut of about $40 for Comcast and $50 for DirecTV.
- RJ McDaniel looks back at the 100th anniversary of baseball on the radio. The first baseball games were broadcast in 1921 and McDaniel feels that in many ways, the radio is the purest way to follow baseball. Certainly Len Kasper seems to believe that.
- And finally, a man has a new memoir coming out about the three years he lived in a secret apartment at Veterans Stadium. The man, Tom Garvey, worked the parking lots at Veteran’s Stadium and found an abandoned concession stand that he turned into an apartment.
And let tomorrow be a better day.